letters which
originally appeared in the columns of that paper.

It is a personal matter, of no interest except to myself, but I should
like to state that the work would have been out much sooner but for a
long and serious illness.

DEMETRIUS C. BOULGER

_29th August 1896._

CONTENTS.

VOLUME I.

CHAP. PAGE

I. BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE 1

II. THE CRIMEA, DANUBE, AND ARMENIA 16

III. THE CHINA WAR 45

IV. THE TAEPING REBELLION 61

V. THE EVER-VICTORIOUS ARMY 78

VI. GRAVESEND AND GALATZ 127

VII. THE FIRST NILE MISSION 141

ILLUSTRATIONS.

PORTRAIT OF GENERAL GORDON, TAKEN SOON AFTER THE CRIMEA _Frontispiece_

HOUSE IN WHICH GENERAL GORDON WAS BORN _To face page_ 16

THE LIFE OF GORDON.

CHAPTER I.

BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE.

Charles George Gordon was born on 28th January 1833, at No. 1 Kemp
Terrace, Woolwich Common, where his father, an officer in the Royal
Artillery, was quartered at the time. The picture given elsewhere of
this house will specially interest the reader as the birthplace of
Gordon. It still stands, as described by Gordon's father in a private
memoir, at the corner of Jackson's Lane, on Woolwich Common.

The name "Gordon" has baffled the etymologists, for there is every
reason to believe that the not inappropriate connection with the
Danish word for a spear is due to a felicitous fancy rather than to
any substantial reality. There is far more justification for the
opinion that the name comes through a French source than from a
Danish. The Gorduni were a leading clan of Caesar's most formidable
opponents, the Nervi; a Duke Gordon charged among the peers of
Charlemagne; and the name is not unknown at the present day in the
Tyrol. The "Gordium" of Phrygia and the "Gordonia" of Macedonia are
also names that suggest an Eastern rather than a Northern origin.
History strengthens this supposition and entirely disposes of the
Danish hypothesis. The first bearer of the name Gordon appeared in
Scotland at far too near a date to the Danish descents upon that
coun