words: "Our English Government lives on a
hand-to-mouth policy. They are very ignorant of these lands, yet some
day or other they or some other Government will have to know them, for
things at Cairo cannot stay as they are. His Highness will be curbed
in, and will no longer be absolute sovereign; then will come the
question of these countries."

At Harrar, Gordon dismissed the Governor Raouf, whom he describes as a
regular tyrant, but who, none the less for his misdeeds, was
proclaimed Governor-General of the Soudan when Gordon left it less
than two years after this visit to Harrar. When this affair was
settled, General Gordon proceeded _via_ Massowah and Souakim to
Khartoum, where he arrived about the middle of June. On his way he had
felt bound to remove eight high military officers from their commands
for various offences, from which may be gathered some idea of the
colleagues on whom he had to depend. He reached Khartoum not a moment
too soon, for the first news that greeted him was that Suleiman had
broken out in open revolt, and was practically master of the Province
of Bahr Gazelle, which lies between Darfour and the Equatorial
Province.

But before describing the steps he took to suppress this formidable
revolt, which resembled the rising under the Mahdi in every point
except its non-religious character, some notice may be given of the
financial difficulties with which he had to cope, and which were much
increased by the Khedive's practice of giving appointments in a
promiscuous manner that were to be chargeable on the scanty and
inadequate revenues of the Soudan.

In the year 1877 the expenditure of the Soudan exceeded the revenue by
over a quarter of a million sterling; in 1878 Gordon had reduced this
deficit to L70,000. In the return given by the Khedive of his
resources when foreign intervention first took place, it was stated
that the Soudan furnished a tribute of L143,000. This was untrue; it
had always been a drain on the Cairo exchequer until in 1879 General
Gordon had the satisfaction, by reducing expenditure in every possible
direction and abolishing sinecures, of securing an exact balance. The
most formidable adversary Gordon had to meet in the course of this
financial struggle was the Khedive himself, and it was only by
sustained effort that he succeeded in averting the imposition of
various expenses on his shoulders which would have rendered success
impossible. First it was two steamers, which