become director of a
company, his pay would have gone on all the same. The only suggestion
the War Office made was that he should ask the Cape Government to
compensate him, but this he indignantly refused. In the result all his
savings during the Mauritius command were swallowed up, and I believe
I understate the amount when I say that his Cape experience cost him
out of his own pocket from first to last five hundred pounds. That sum
was a very considerable one to a man who never inherited any money,
and who went through life scorning all opportunities of making it.
But on this occasion he vindicated a principle, and showed that
"money was not his object."

As Gordon went to the Cape specially for the purpose of treating the
Basutoland question, it may be well to describe briefly what that
question was. Basutoland is a mountainous country, difficult of
access, but in resources self-sufficing, on the eastern side of the
Orange Free State, and separated from Natal and Kaffraria, or the
Transkei division of Cape Colony, by the sufficiently formidable
Drakensberg range. Its population consisted of 150,000 stalwart and
freedom-loving Highlanders, ruled by four chiefs--Letsea, Masupha,
Molappo, and Lerothodi, with only the three first of whom had Gordon
in any way to deal. Notwithstanding their numbers, courage, and the
natural strength of their country, they owed their safety from
absorption by the Boers to British protection, especially in 1868, and
they were taken over by us as British subjects without any formality
three years later. They do not seem to have objected so long as the
tie was indefinite, but when in 1880 it was attempted to enforce the
regulations of the Peace Preservation Act by disarming these clans,
then the Basutos began a pronounced and systematic opposition. Letsea
and Lerothodi kept up the pretence of friendliness, but Masupha
fortified his chief residence at Thaba Bosigo, and openly prepared for
war. That war had gone on for two years without result, and the total
cost of the Basuto question had been four millions sterling when
Gordon was summoned to the scene. Having given this general
description of the question, it will be well to state the details of
the matters in dispute, as set forth by Gordon after he had examined
all the papers and heard the evidence of the most competent and
well-informed witnesses.

His memorandum, dated 26th May 1882, read as follows:--

"In 1843 the Basuto chie