abettors of the slave trade. Yet
as he possessed no military force, while there were not fewer than
6000 Bashi-Bazouks scattered throughout the provinces, he had to
proceed with caution. His method of breaking up this body is a
striking illustration of his thorough grasp of detail, and of the
prudence, as well as daring, with which he applied what he conceived
to be the most sensible means of removing a grave difficulty. This
considerable force was scattered in numerous small garrisons
throughout the province. From a military point of view this
arrangement was bad, but it enabled each separate garrison to do a
little surreptitious slave-hunting on its own account. General Gordon
called in these garrisons, confined the Bashi-Bazouks to three or four
places, peremptorily stopped the arrival of recruits, and gradually
replaced them with trustworthy black Soudanese soldiers. Before he
laid down the reins of power, at the end of 1879, he had completely
broken up this body, and as effectually relieved the Soudanese from
their military tyrants as he had freed them from the whip.

Having put all these matters in trim, Gordon left Khartoum in the
middle of the summer of 1877 for the western province of Darfour,
where a number of matters claimed his pressing attention. In that
province there were several large Egyptian garrisons confined in two
or three towns, and unable--through fear, as it proved, but on account
of formidable enemies, as was alleged--to move outside them. The
reports of trouble and hostility were no doubt exaggerated, but still
there was a simmering of disturbance below the surface that portended
peril in the future; and read by the light of after events, it seems
little short of miraculous that General Gordon was able to keep it
under by his own personal energy and the magic of his name. When on
the point of starting to relieve these garrisons, he found himself
compelled to disband a regiment of 500 Bashi-Bazouks, who constituted
the only force at his immediate disposal. He had then to organise a
nondescript body, after the same fashion as he had adopted at the
Equator, and with 500 followers of this kind--of whom he said only 150
were any good--he started on his march for the districts which lie
several hundred miles west of the White Nile, and approach most nearly
of the Khedive's possessions to Lake Tchad.

The enemies with whom General Gordon had to deal were two. There was
first Haroun, who claimed, as