have subordinated this desire to that of obtaining an increased
revenue."

But while Gordon brought kindness and conciliation into play, the
settlement of the region entrusted to his care called for sterner
measures, and he was not the man, with all his nobility of character
and overflowing supply of the milk of human kindness, to refrain from
those vigorous and decisive measures that keep turbulent races in
subjection, and advance the cause of civilization, which in so many
quarters of the world must be synonymous with British supremacy. The
student of his voluminous writings will find many passages that
express philosophical doubts as to our right to coerce black races,
and to bind peoples who in their rude and primitive fashion are free
to the car of our wide-world Empire. But I am under no obligation to
save them the trouble of discovery by citing them, more especially
because I believe that they give a false impression of the man. I have
affirmed, and shall adduce copious and, as I think, convincing
evidence, at every turn of his varied experiences, that the true
Gordon was not the meek, colourless, milk-and-water, text-expounding,
theological disputant many would have us accept as a kind of Bunyan's
hero, but in action an uncompromising and resistless leader, who, when
he smote, at once struck his hardest. Gordon has supplied the answer
to his own misgivings as to our moral right to coerce and subject
tribes who advanced their natural claims to be left undisturbed: "We
cannot have them on our flank, and it is indispensable that they shall
be subjected."

Having organised his new forces, equipped all his steamers--one of
which was fitted out with machinery that had been left in Baker's time
to rust in the Korosko Desert--General Gordon set himself to the task
of systematically organising the line of posts which he had conceived
and begun to construct in the first stages of his administration. The
object of these posts was twofold. By them he would cut the slave
routes in two, and also open a road to the great Lakes of the Equator.
In the first few months of his residence he had transferred the
principal station from Gondokoro to Lardo, twelve miles lower down the
stream, and on the left instead of the right bank of the river. These
places lie a little on each side of the fifth degree of north
latitude, and Gordon fixed upon Lardo as his capital, because it was
far the healthier. Above Lardo he established at