n clothes and made clothes for
some of his men, invented rat-traps and machines for making rockets,
tamed baby lions and baby hippopotamuses, cleaned guns, raided the
camps of slavers, nursed the sick, and fed the hungry. And day and
night he worked to rid the land of slavery; to teach the black people
the meaning of justice, of mercy, and of honour.

His food all the time was of the plainest--no vegetables, only dry
biscuits, bits of broiled meat, and macaroni boiled in sugar and water.
Ants and beetles often nested in the stores, and made them horrid to
the taste. "Oh, how I should like a good dinner!" he wrote to his
sister.

In addition to all his other work, Gordon had the task of finding out
for himself the exact geography of that part of the Nile of which he
was Governor, and he had to do much exploring.

While doing this he one day marched 18 miles through jungle, in pouring
rain. Another day, in the hottest season of that hot land, he marched
35 miles.

As he and his men sailed up the Nile they met with many dangers. There
were rapids to pass, furious hippopotamuses to charge their boats, and
on the banks were concealed enemies, throwing their assegais with
deadly aim. And through all this he had only a pack of cowardly Arabs
to depend on for everything.

A wizard belonging to one of the black tribes, sure that the white man
and his soldiers could only have come for some evil purpose, stood on
the top of a rock by the river, screaming curses at them and exciting
his tribe.

"I don't think that's a healthy spot to deliver an address from," said
Gordon, taking up a rifle and pointing it at the wizard, who at once
ran away.

"We do not want your beads; we do not want your cloth; we only want you
to go away," one tribe said to him. Gordon's heart was full of pity
for them. It was for them that he was spending his life, had they only
known it.

The never-ending work and worry tried him badly.

"Poor sheath, it is much worn," he wrote of himself from the dreary
land of marsh and forest into which he had come while laying down a
chain of posts between Gondokoro and the Lakes.

The dampness of the marshes was poison to white men, and earwigs, ants,
mosquitoes, sandflies, beetles, scorpions, snakes, and every imaginable
insect and reptile seemed to do their best to make things unpleasant
for him.

The turf was full of prickly grass seeds; the long grass cut the
fingers to the bone if people tried