The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-02-07

French decoration Of the Legion of Honor. He
captain in the English service at twenty
six, major at thirty, and colonel and COM
mander of the Order of Bath at thirty-two.
In China, at the head of what came to be
known as the 'ever-victorions army" he
won the sobriquet of Chinese Gordon, and
was made Ii Tu, the highest rank in the Chi
nese imperial army. Steadily through his ca
refusing present of E3, 500 from the imperial
treasury, returned to England as poor as he left.
While leading the fiercest charges in his Chinese
campaigns he carried a little black cane with
which he directed his troops, and this came to
be known as "Gordon's magic wand of victorya
The story of his service in Egypt is intimately
connected with the history of the attempts of
civilized nations to suppress the slave trade in
what are known as the equatorial provinces OF
central Africa. Inspired by European traders
the tribes of the Soudan were kept in a constant
state of petty war. the sole object of which was
the capture of prisoners in order to sell them as
slaves. Slave hunters organized themselves
into tribal chiefs and by their raids and
ravages converted a country that had once
been garden into a desert" In 1874
Gordon was appointed by the khedive
governor general OF the equatorial province
territory as large as Great Britain. Spain,
France. Holland, Germany and Austria taken
together, with Portutal and Belgium thrown in,
extending from Rabal Chambe to Victoria lake.
his task was the suppression of slave Dealers
the conclliation of the tribes, and the establish
menu Oh something ike clVlllzeU OrSdIiZdblOH
This he accomplished with marvellous dispatch
He moved about the vast territory under
his commission like inspired bless
ing to the oppressed, while the slave
dealers, pashas and other evif-doers
regarded him as an incarnate terror. He in
spired those around him with the fervor Of his
own energy. His life appeared irradiated with
an enthusiastic faith in the divine presence and
power that made him an object Of awe to the
simple people, to whom he was always kind
ho,o ;,1 h; 10
BY the close of 1876 Gordon returned to Cairo,
his mission accomplished. But even then he
was oppressed by the reflection on what would
become of the people he had relieved when
his influence was removed. Early In
1877 he was again sent UP the Nile,
empowered to unite the Soudan, Darfour and
the provinces of the equator into one province.
The first edict he issued was from Khartoum,
and it was to the effect that after JAN ]. 1878,
no new slaves should be considered property.
Mounted on ieetfooted camel, clothed in be-
jeweed uniform costing $500, Gordon penetra
ted the remotest sections of his province, and
confounded the slave hunters by the marvellous
celebrity of his movements and the almost super
natural suddenness of his appearances Resistance
often vanished before his audacious threat to cut
whole army to pieces, when his only force con-
sisted of the scantiest body guard. Before the
close of 1879 Gordon turned his back on the Sou
dan for the second time his work we'll done
Now we come to the third-the fatal return
ing. Why was General Gordon in Khartoum,
dead or alive, the fifty second anniversary of
his blrthF Probably because moved by his love
for the Soudanese he gave his views in the Pail
Mall Gazette, Jan. 8, 1884, on the abandonment
OF the Soudan to the tender mercies of the
Turks and Circassians. While the English were
protecting the khedive from Arab Bey in lower
Egypt, Mahomet Ahmed now known as 1.-The
Mahdi." a man of great natural ability, was in
citing the inhabitants of the Soudan to relig
ious uprising. He claimed to be the long ex-
pected redeemer of Islam, whom Mohamned
had foretoid. and worked upon the emotional
and superstitious natures of the ignorant Arabs
and Dongolawis. Gordon, however, always
held that it was a mistake to regard the Mahdi
as in any sense religious leader. He
thought him the personifcation OF popu-
lar discomfort. and suspected that he
was mere pVppet put forward by
Ilyas, the largest slave-owner in Obeid and that
he assumed religious title to give color to his
defense of the popular rights. Whatever inspired
the Mahdi he soon gathered about him formd-
able army of fanatics. The natives had been
taught by Condor while he was governor that
they had right to exist and they focked TO the
Mahdi's standard to rid themselves Of the har.
rowing Turkish rule. With apparently resist
less energy the army Of the False Prophet
overran the Sondan One by one the
Egytian pashas were defeated by his fa-
natical hordes. Ell Obeid, the chief city of
Kordofan, which for time resisted his assaults,
surrendered, and its garrison merged in the
victorious army Then came the terrible ami
hilation of Hicks Pasha and his command, from
which no European escaped to tell the story.
The Mahdi Was sweeping up the Nile and threat
ening khartoum, which Sir Samuel Baker had
predicted Twill be the richest commercial entire
pot in the old world" Then General Gordon,
being in London, and about to leave in command
of an expedition to the Congo against the slave
trade, felt called upon to protest against the
abandonment of the eastern Soudan TO either the
Mahdi or the expressions of the Turks. In the
publication above referred to he asked that
n11 &c 81 nj
should be given absolute control of Egyptian
affairs and declared that it was necessary to hold
Khartoum. He favored the appointment of Sir
Samuel Baker, Governor general Of the Soudan,
as the man possessing the essential energy and
single tongue requisite for the Office. The post
he chose for Baker was given to himself On the
evening of Jan 18, 1884, General Gordon left
Charing Cross commissioned by the Gladstone
government not to reconquer the Soudan, but to
extricate the garrsons and reconstitute the conn
try upon Its old basis of local government" 1t
was glorious mission. Gordon believed that,
once in Khartoume all he had to do was to de-
fend it until disunion and tribal jealousies
should work their natural result in the disinte-
grafton of the Mandi's army. When Gordonleft
Cairo, Jan. q, it was as British High Commits
sioner and the Khedives Governor general of
the Soudan When he reached Korosko,
Gen. Gordon and Col Stewart quit the Nile
valley, and struck across the Nubian desert on
their celebrated camel ride of 240 miles to Abu-
Halned. Nothing was heard of Gordon and his
companion until they arrived at Berber on Feb
H. Six days later he fentered Khartoum and
at once entered upon his work OF removing the
causes of native discomfort Before he slept ON
the night of Feb. l8 General Gordon had made
a bonfire of the books of debt, bastinado-rods
and other implements of oppression of the
overtaxed people. He inspected the
hospital and arsenal, and struck the
chains from 200 wretched human Great
ures he found rotting in a loathsome
prison. His presence brought life. liberty and
hope to despairing city. Within its walls were
thirds were slaves. Not all of these were
friendly to the government. Probably the ma
jority were unfriendly. Nearly all the native
traders secret partsans of the SEahdi. and
hope for the re establishment of the slave trade
The slaves are mostly negroes, aud like, the free
population. Mohammedans. They are the chill
dren of superstition, and their political creed