r, say L600. Duke of That wants house, &c. All the time the
poor people are ground down to get money for all this. 'Who art thou to
be afraid of man?' If He wills, I will shake all this in some way not
clear to me now. Do not think I am an Egoist; I am like Moses who
despised the riches of Egypt. I will not bow to Haman." Little did he
then foresee that before eight years had passed British guns would be
shaking the stronghold of Alexandria, and that 10,000 Egyptian soldiers
would yield the citadel of Cairo to a small force of some 300 troops
carrying the British flag. From Suakim he went on a camel to Berber,
and thence by steamer to Khartoum, the first time he ever visited a
place which now can never be mentioned without awakening in the mind
associations of this noble servant of God, who feared neither man nor
devil.

At first Gordon was to a certain extent subordinate to the
Governor-General of the Soudan, through whom he had to get supplies.
But by September 8th he was enabled to write: "I have now entirely
separated my province from that of the Soudan. When I came up I had
instructions to ask for all I wanted from the Governor-General of
Khartoum, who was ordered to supply me. Now this was from the first a
fruitful source of quarrel, and must have been so, for I could not be
continually writing to the Khedive about the non-supply of things and
money; it would have worn me and every one out. Now I am quite
independent, raise my own revenue, and administer it, and send the
residue to Cairo, which residue is all they care for there."

* * *

The Equatorial Province lies considerably to the south of Khartoum, and
is bisected by the Nile. As a matter of fact, the equator does not run
through any part of the province, though the southern part comes very
close to it, just touching the Victoria Nyanza, through the north of
which the equator runs. The hold that Egypt had at any time on this
province was indeed very slight, and considering how little capable she
was of managing even her own affairs, it does seem ridiculous in the
extreme that she should ever have attempted to annex an enormous
country outside her borders. When Egypt was really strong and powerful,
as in olden times, it does not appear that she ever held territory
beyond Wady Haifa, and it is in reality only within this century,
during the whole of which Egypt has been weak, that she has extended
her territory down to