It was neither a reprehensible nor an unintelligible vanity for the Egyptian ruler to desire the control of the whole of the great river, whose source had been traced south of the Equator, and 2000 miles beyond the limits of the Pharaohs' dominions. Nor was the desire diminished when, without sharing the gratification of the Prince in whose name he acted, General Gordon advanced cogent reasons for establishing a line of communication from Gondokoro, across the territory of Mtesa, with the port of Mombasa on the Indian Ocean. As Gordon pointed out, that place was nearly 1,100 miles from Khartoum, and only 900 from Mombasa, while the advance to the Lakes increased the distance from the one place by nearly 300 miles, and reduced that to the other in the same measure. This short and advantageous line of communication with the Equatorial Province and Upper Nile was beyond both the power and the sphere of the Khedive; but in the task of winning one of the most important of African zones formally recognised as lying within the British sphere of influence, the route advocated by General Gordon in 1875 has now become of the most undoubted value and importance.
The aversion to all forms of notoriety except that which was inseparable from his duty led Gordon to shrink from the publicity and congratulations sure to follow if he were the first to navigate those inland seas on the Equator. Having made all the arrangements, and provided for the complete security of the task, he decided to baffle the plans in his honour of the Royal Geographical Society, by delegating the duty of first unfurling the Khedive's flag on their waters to his able and much-trusted lieutenant, Gessi. Although he sometimes took hasty resolutions, in flat opposition to his declared intentions, he would probably have adhered to this determination but for reading in one of Dr Schweinfurth's published lectures that "it may be that Lake Albert belongs to the Nile basin, but it is not a settled fact, for there are seventy miles between Foweira and Lake Albert never explored, and one is not authorised in making the Nile leave Lake Albert. The question is very doubtful." The accidental perusal of this passage changed General Gordon's views. He felt that this task devolved on him as the responsible administrator of the whole region, and that his natural shrinking from trumpery and too often easily-earned geographical honours, which he has bluntly asserted should only be granted by the Sovereign, did not justify his evading a piece of work that came within his day's duty. Therefore he resolved to ascertain the fact by personal examination, and to set at rest the doubts expressed by the German traveller.
Expanding Dr Schweinfurth's remarks, he explained that "it was contended that the Nile did not flow out of Lake Victoria, and thence through Lake Albert, and so northward, but that one river flowed out of Lake Victoria and another out of Lake Albert, and that these two rivers united and formed the Nile. This statement could not be positively denied, inasmuch as no one had actually gone along the river from Foweira to Magungo. So I went along it with much suffering, and settled the question. I also found that from Foweira or Karuma Falls there was a series of rapids to Murchison Falls, thus by degrees getting rid of the 1000-feet difference of level between Foweira and Magungo." While mapping this region, Gordon one day marched eighteen miles through jungle and in pouring rain, and on each of the four following days he also walked fifteen miles – and the month was August, only a few miles north of the Equator, or, in other words, the very hottest period of the year. Having established the course of the Nile and its navigability to the Murchison Falls close to the Victoria Nyanza, General Gordon gave what he thought was a finishing touch to this exploring expedition by effecting an arrangement with King Mtesa.
But in order to explain the exact significance of this step, and the consequent disappointment when it was found that the arrangement was illusory and destitute of practical value, it is necessary to go back a little, and trace the course of events in the Uganda region.
The Egyptian advance towards the south brought in its train two questions of external policy. One was with Abyssinia, of which we shall hear much in the next chapter; and the other was with the kingdom of Uganda and the kinglets who regarded Mtesa as their chief. Of these the principal was Kaba Rega, chief of Unyoro, and the recognised ruler of the territory lying between the two Lakes. He was a man of capacity and spirit, and had raised himself to the position he occupied by ousting kinsmen who had superior claims to the privileges of supreme authority. In the time of Gordon's predecessor, Sir Samuel Baker, Kaba Rega had come to the front as a native champion, resolved to defy the Egyptians and their white leaders to do their worst. In a spirited attack on Baker's camp at Masindi, he endeavoured to settle the pretensions of his invaders at a blow, but he found that numbers were no match for the superior arms of his opponent. But defeat did not diminish his spirit. Baker decreed his deposition as King of Unyoro, proclaiming in his stead a cousin named Rionga, but the order had no practical effect. Kaba Rega retired a little from the vicinity of the Egyptian forces; he retained "the magic stool" of authority over the lands and peoples of Unyoro, and his cousin Rionga possessed nothing beyond the empty title contained in an Egyptian official decree. This was the position when Gordon appeared on the scene, and his first obligation was to give something like force and reality to the pretensions of Rionga.
If Kaba Rega had been satisfied to retain the practical marks of authority, it is probable that Gordon would have been well content to leave him alone, but irritated by the slight placed upon him by Sir Samuel Baker, he assumed the offensive on every possible occasion. He attacked Colonel Long, one of Gordon's lieutenants, on his way back from Mtesa, just as he had Baker; he threatened the Egyptian station at Foweira; and above all, he welcomed the thwarted slave-dealers, who were not averse to taking their revenge in any form at Gordon's expense. In these circumstances an active policy was forced on General Gordon, who promptly decided that Kaba Rega was "too treacherous" to be allowed to retain his kingdom, and that measures must be taken to set up Rionga in his place. It was at this moment, unfortunately, that General Gordon discovered the worthlessness of his troops, and when, in 1876, he had organised his new force, and was ready to carry out the policy he had decided on in 1874, he was thinking mostly of his departure from the Soudan, and had no time to proceed to extremities against these southern adversaries, for behind Kaba Rega stood Mtesa.
When Gordon, in January 1876, entered the territory of Unyoro, belonging to Kaba Rega, he found it desirable to take up the cause of Anfina, in preference to that of Rionga, as the more influential chief; but neither proved in popularity or expertness a match for Kaba Rega. The possession of "the magic stool," the ancestral throne or copper seat of the family of Unyoro, believed to be identified with the fortunes of the little kingdom, alone compensated for the few losses in the open field, as Kaba Rega was always careful to retreat on the approach of his most dangerous adversary. Neither of his kinsmen was likely to prove a formidable foe. Rionga passed his hours in native excesses, in the joy of receiving the titular rank of Vakil to the Khedive. Anfina alienated Gordon's friendly feeling by suggesting the wholesale assassination of Kaba Rega's officers and followers when they came on a mission to his camp. Kaba Rega carried off the stool to the south, or rather the west, of Victoria Nyanza, and bided his time, while Mtesa wrote a half-defiant and half-entreating letter to Gordon, asking him to spare Unyoro. Mtesa had his own views of gain, and when Gordon proposed to establish a fortified post with a garrison of 160 men at Urundogani, the Uganda ruler begged that it might be stationed at his own capital, Dubaga, with the view of either winning over the troops to his service or employing them against his own enemies. Gordon saw through this proposal and withheld his consent, but his lieutenant, Nuehr Agha, acted on his own responsibility, and moved with his force to Dubaga. In a few weeks Gordon learnt that they were all, practically speaking, prisoners, and that his already heavy enough task had been increased by the necessity of rescuing them.
Gordon accordingly advanced in person to Mrooli, the nearest point to Mtesa's capital without actually crossing his frontier, and as he had with him a strong force of his newly-raised black contingent, he felt confident of his capacity to punish Mtesa for any act of treachery, and to annex, if necessary, his kingdom. But Gordon did not wish to force a war on Mtesa, or to increase the burdens of the Nile dominion. All he wanted was the restoration of the men detained at Dubaga, and he soon received assurances that his presence, and the moral effect of the force he had brought with him, would attain this result without any necessity for fighting. As Gordon worded his complaint, it was a case not of his wishing to annex Mtesa, but of Mtesa annexing his soldiers.
Having satisfied himself that Mtesa was not willing to risk a quarrel, General Gordon sent Nuehr Agha with ninety men to bring back the 140 men detained at Dubaga, and the task was accomplished without any hitch or delay. This was due partly to the military demonstrations, and partly also to a clever diplomatic move by Gordon, who wrote to Mtesa expressing his readiness to recognise by treaty the independence of Uganda, and to provide a safe-conduct for the King's ambassadors to Cairo. At this time the late Dr Emin, who claimed to be an Arab and a Mahommedan, was at Dubaga, but his influence on the course of events was nil, and he and Gordon never met. After the return of the troops Gordon commenced his retirement to the Nile, and after an arduous and dangerous march of eighty miles through a swampy jungle beset by Kaba Rega's tribesmen, who were able to throw their spears with accurate aim for fifty yards, he succeeded in reaching Masindi without loss. Then Gordon drew up a plan of campaign for the effectual subjugation of Kaba Rega, but he did not wait to see it carried out, as the first move could not be made until the grass was dry enough to burn. As soon as that season arrived three columns were to march against the chief of Unyoro in the following order – one consisting of 150 black soldiers, and 3000 of the Lango tribe, under Rionga, moving from Mrooli to Kisoga; another of about the same strength from Keroto to Masindi; and the third operating from the Albert Lake with the steamer. The plan was a good one, but Kaba Rega, by having recourse to his old Fabian tactics, again baffled it.
Although these events happened when Gordon had reached Cairo, it will be appropriate to give here the result of this campaign. The Unyoro chieftain retired before the Egyptians, who carried off much cattle, and when they in turn retired, he advanced and reoccupied his country. After a brief period the Egyptians definitely gave up their stations at Mrooli, Foweira, and Masindi, on the left bank of the Victoria Nile, and confined themselves to those on its right bank, and thus finally were Mtesa and Kaba Rega left to enjoy their own rude ideas of independence and regal power.
So far as General Gordon was concerned, the Uganda question was then, both for this period and for his subsequent and more important command, definitely closed. But one personal incident remains to be chronicled. When Gordon received Mtesa's request to garrison Dubaga, and had actually planted a station on the Victoria Lake, he telegraphed the facts to the Khedive, who promptly replied by conferring on him the Medjidieh Order. At the moment that Gordon received this intimation he had decided that it would not be politic to comply with Mtesa's request to garrison Dubaga, and he had only just succeeded in rescuing an Egyptian force from a position of danger in the manner described. He felt that he had obtained this decoration "under false pretences," but the recollection of the hard and honourable work he had performed must have soon salved his conscience.
At an early stage of his work Gordon felt disposed to throw it up, and during the whole three years a constant struggle went on within himself as to whether he should stay or return to England. Many causes produced this feeling. There was, in the first place, disillusionment on discovering that the whole thing, from the Egyptian Government point of view, was a sham, and that his name was being made use of to impose on Europe. But then he thought he saw an opportunity of doing some useful and beneficial work, and, stifling his disappointment, he went on. Arrived on the scene, he found himself thwarted by his Egyptian colleagues, and treated with indifference by the Cairene Government. He also discovered that his troops were worthless, and that not one of his officers, civil and military, cared a fig for the task in hand. Their one thought was how to do nothing at all, and Gordon's patience and energy were monopolised, and in the end exhausted, by attempts to extract work from his unwilling subordinates. Even the effort to educate them up to the simple recognition that a certain amount of work had to be done, and that unless it were well done, it had to be done over again, resulted in failure. To the plain instructions he gave, they would give an interpretation of their own; and while fully admitting on explanation that this was not the proper way of executing any task, they would invariably repeat it after their own fashion, until at length Gordon could see no alternative to performing the task himself. Thus were his labours indefinitely multiplied, and only his exceptional health and energy enabled him to cope with them at all. How much they affected him in his own despite may be judged from the exclamation which escaped him, after he had obtained a considerable success that would have elated any other leader – "But the worry and trouble have taken all the syrup out of the affair!"
The personal glimpses obtainable of Gordon during these depressing years, while engaged on a task he foresaw would be undone by the weakness and indifference of the Egyptian authorities as soon as he gave it up, are very illustrative of his energy and inherent capacity for command. The world at large was quite indifferent to the heroism and the self-denial, amounting to self-sacrifice, which alone enabled him to carry on his own shoulders, like a modern Atlas, the whole administration of a scarcely conquered region, which covered ten degrees of latitude. But we who have to consider his career in all its bearings, and to discover, as it were, behind his public and private acts, the true man, cannot afford to pass over so lightly passages that are in a very special degree indicative of the man's character and temperament. In no other period of his career did he devote himself more strenuously to the details, in themselves monotonous and uninteresting, of a task that brought him neither present nor prospective satisfaction. When the tools with which he was supplied failed him, as they did at every turn, he threw himself into the struggle, and supplied the shortcomings of all the rest. When it was a matter of pulling the boats up the river, he was the first at the ropes, and the last to leave them, wading through the water with his trousers up. If it was his steamer that had run aground, all the active labour, as well as the organisation, fell on him. Sooner than add to the work of those in attendance on him, he would be seen preparing and cooking his own food; and because he could do it better than his native servant, he would clean his duck-gun, with the whole camp agape, until his ways were realised, at an Excellency doing his own work. Nor did he spare himself physically. His average day's walk, which satisfied him that he was in good health, was fourteen miles; but he often exceeded twenty miles, and on one occasion he even walked thirty-five miles under a tropical sun. Of the conduct of his soldiers against an enemy, or in coping with the difficulties of river navigation, he was always nervous, and whether for work or for fighting he used, he said, "to pray them up as he did his men in China"; but without his knowledge, one of his own soldiers was vigilantly observant of his conduct, and has recorded, through the instrumentality of Slatin Pasha, his recollections of Gordon as a fighter and leader of soldiers: —
"Gordon was indeed a brave man. I was one of his chiefs in the fight against the Mima and Khawabir Arabs; it was in the plain of Fafa, and a very hot day. The enemy had charged us, and had forced back the first line, and their spears were falling thick around us; one came within a hair's-breadth of Gordon, but he did not seem to mind it at all, and the victory we won was entirely due to him and his reserve of 100 men. When the fight was at its worst he found time to light a cigarette. Never in my life did I see such a thing; and then the following day, when he divided the spoil, no one was forgotten, and he kept nothing for himself. He was very tender-hearted about women and children, and never allowed them to be distributed, as is our custom in war, but he fed and clothed them at his own expense, and had them sent to their homes as soon as the war was over."
This picture of Gordon lighting a cigarette in the press of a doubtful battle may well be coupled with that already given during the Taeping rebellion, of his standing unarmed in the breach of an assaulted stockade, while around him pressed on or wavered the individuals of a forlorn hope. It will be difficult for anyone to find in all the annals of war another instance of human courage more nearly approaching the sublime.
In November 1875 General Gordon had fully made up his mind to resign and return to Cairo, in consequence of the indifference with which he was treated by the Khedive's Government, and he had actually written the telegrams announcing this intention, and given orders to pack up the stores for the passage down the Nile, when the receipt of a long letter full of praise and encouragement from the Khedive Ismail induced him to alter his plans, to tear up the telegrams, and to continue his work. General Gordon gives his reason for changing his mind very briefly: "The man had gone to all this expense under the belief that I would stick to him; I could not therefore leave him." So he stayed on for another year. In July 1876 he formally and more deliberately resigned, but the execution of this decision had to be postponed by the necessity he felt under, as already explained, of solving the geographical questions connected with the Nile and the Lakes, and also of securing the southern frontier against Kaba Rega and Mtesa.
These tasks accomplished, or placed in the way of accomplishment, there remained no let or hindrance to his departure; and by the end of October he was in Khartoum. But even then he felt uncertain as to his ultimate plans, and merely telegraphed to the Cairo authorities that he intended to come down for a time. With his back turned on the scene of his labours, the old desire not to leave his work half done came over him, and all the personal inconvenience and incessant hardship and worry of the task were forgotten in the belief that he was called on by God "to open the country thoroughly to both Lakes." He saw very clearly that what he had accomplished in the three years of his stay did not provide a permanent or complete cure of the evils arising out of the slave-trade and the other accompaniments of misgovernment, and he did not like to be beaten, which he admitted he was if he retired without remedying anything. These reflections explain why, even when leaving, his thoughts were still of returning and resuming the work, little more than commenced, in those Mussulman countries, where he foresaw a crisis that must come about soon.
But these thoughts and considerations did not affect his desire for a change to Lower Egypt, or even to visit home; and leaving Khartoum on 12th November he reached Cairo on 2nd December. He then formally placed his resignation in the Khedive's hands, but it was neither accepted nor declined; and the Khedive, in some mysterious manner, seems to have arrived at the sound conclusion that after a brief rest General Gordon would sicken of inaction, and that it would be no difficult manner to lure him back to that work in the Soudan which had already established its spell over him. Of that work, considerable as it was as the feat of a single man, it need only be said that it would have remained transitory in its effect and inconclusive in its results if General Gordon had finally turned his back on it at the close of his tenure of the post of Governor of the Equatorial Province at the end of the year 1876. When he left Cairo in the middle of December for England there was really very little reason to doubt that at the right moment he would be ready to take up the work again.