ed so long as the Egyptian authorities
pursued an active repressive policy such as their great English
representative had enforced. The military confederacy of Zebehr, which
had at one time alarmed the Khedive in his palace at Cairo, had been
broken up. The authority of the Khartoum Governor-General had been
made supreme. As Gordon said, on travelling down from Khartoum in
August 1879, "Not a man could lift his hand without my leave
throughout the whole extent of the Soudan."

General Gordon reached Cairo on 23rd August, with the full intention
of retiring from the Egyptian service; but before he could do so there
remained the still unsolved Abyssinian difficulty, which had formed
part of his original mission. He therefore yielded to the request of
the Khedive to proceed on a special mission to the Court of King John,
then ruling that inaccessible and mysterious kingdom, and one week
after his arrival at Cairo he was steaming down the Red Sea to
Massowah. His instructions were contained in a letter from Tewfik
Pasha to himself. After proclaiming his pacific intentions, the
Khedive exhorted him "to maintain the rights of Egypt, to preserve
intact the frontiers of the State, without being compelled to make any
restitution to Abyssinia, and to prevent henceforth every encroachment
or other act of aggression in the interests of both countries."

In order to explain the exact position of affairs in Abyssinia at this
period, a brief summary must be given of events between Gordon's first
overtures to King John in March 1877, and his taking up the matter
finally in August 1879. As explained at the beginning of this chapter,
those overtures came to nothing, because King John was called away to
engage in hostilities with Menelik, King of Shoa, and now himself
Negus, or Emperor of Abyssinia. In the autumn of the earlier year King
John wrote Gordon a very civil letter, calling him a Christian and a
brother, but containing nothing definite, and ending with the
assertion that "all the world knows the Abyssinian frontier." Soon
after this Walad el Michael recommenced his raids on the border, and
when he obtained some success, which he owed to the assistance of one
of Gordon's own subordinates, given while Gordon was making himself
responsible for his good conduct, he was congratulated by the Egyptian
War Minister, and urged to prosecute the conquest of Abyssinia.
Instead of attempting the impossible, he very wisely came to terms
wit