in careful detail, saying to me: "I want | and in five minutes the twelve uncles and you to understand this, that you may the boy were dead-shot by his orders.* know the cause of my son's death was a servant's treachery." Now, Gessi, the pasha said, was a poor man, and he did not know the honor of kings. It is not thus that great men act, nor that such a government as the English would wish to act. Think of those wars with which you may be acquainted. When the French and the Prussians fought together, the Prussians gave back their prisoners with honor. After the Russo-Turkish war the Russians gave back their prisoners. When the French fought in Africa they kept their word to Abd-el-Kader. I myself, when I took Moto, though he had killed my cousin, did not use him thus. Nor do I believe that Gordon ordered my son's death by treachery. Afterwards Gessi gathered riches, and went to Suez. But there he died, and God now is his judge. Upon receiving the news of the defeat of Idris, Gordon was angry, and Gessi was sent to reduce Suleiman to submission. At the same time Gordon wrote to Zebehr, calling upon him to fulfil his promise of helping him with his influence, and Zebehr telegraphed to his son: "I do not wish you to fight; submit to Gessi." This telegram could of course be sent only to Khartoum for Gordon to forward. Gordon received it and sent it on, but fighting had already began. Suleiman held the place against Gessi altogether for five months. "He was only sixteen," his father said, with a sort of pathetic pride, "and he kept all those troops with a European leader at bay." When Zebehr's telegram arrived, as Zebehr afterwards Gordon heard that I was angry because heard, the boy's uncles strongly advised of my son's death, and on his way up to him to submit, but his blood was up; he Khartoum the third time we saw each was proud, child-like, of his first victo- other in the presence of Sir Evelyn Barries, and he said, “No, if we submit now ing, Nubar Pasha, and the interpreters. we shall be all killed." He determined, Gordon said, "You wrote to your son to however, to send messengers to Gordon, fight." I said, "No; it is not true. If I who was at Shekka,* begging him once had, then it had been I who killed my son. more to send some one else to take pos- But I did not." Gordon said, "I hear session of the place, and offering in that you are very angry." Then everything case immediate submission. Nine men was explained between us, and all was went to Gordon and begged him to ap-made clear. Those who were present can point a governor. Gessi, hearing of it, sent a message himself to Gordon, that these men were only spies. Gordon naturally believed his own lieutenant, and the men were taken and executed as spies. News of this came to Suleiman. His uncles again urged him to lay down his arms. He would not, but he sent a second embassy to Gordon. The second embassy met with the fate of the first. Gessi in the mean time had obtained several victories. The uncles perpetually urged Suleiman to lay down his arms. Suleiman was finally beaten and surprised at Dara. Then he yielded. Gessi was sent for. He promised that Suleiman and his relations should go free. Suleiman's soldiers were given up, and peace was sworn. The prisoners lived with Gessi on friendly terms for five days, eating at the same table. On the fifth day they were to separate. Suleiman and his uncles were called together under a tree. Gessi spoke with them very kindly, saying, "Now consult together, and let me know what things you require for your journey." His soldiers were all round the tree. He walked away, * In Gordon's letter this embassy is mentioned. tell you of it as well as I. The interposition of bad men, Idris Abtar's wild stories about me, the reports of my double dealing, everything was explained. Gordon said, "I am very sorry for your son's death." I said, "I gave you my son, and when I gave him to you I gave you rights of life and death; but I do not hold you personally responsible for his death. I know that it was English policy and Gessi, not you, who killed my son. We shook hands and were friends. On my side, I freed Gordon of the guilt of my son's death, and on his side Gordon acknowledged that I had not acted treacherously. I referred him to the great people of Khartoum, who knew me and my family, and afterwards when he went up he found what I had said to be true. All was wiped out between us. Though he was against me, I know Gordon to be a great and I am, of course, acquainted with the official account of this transaction. I give Zebehr's account as him by report, and is as likely to be inaccurate as ours. he gave it. It is to be remembered that it reached But it represents what he and doubtless many other na considerable interval between. I made notes on each tives believe. He gave me the story twice, with a occasion at the time. When I compared them afterwards, I found them almost identical. good man. I respected his character, say, 'I have done this thing, or I have not'? If they had such a letter, signed by me with my own name, they had proof of my treachery - all that was needed to condemn me to death. No such letter ever existed. It was only a fabrication of my enemies either a false letter made on purpose, or no letter." On hearing Gessi's account of the desolate condition in which he found the White Nile provinces, the pasha replied that it was not so in his time. He could not answer for the effects of Idris Abtar's rule.* When he left Darfour, towards the end of 1875, he went down to Egypt without returning to Mandugba. He took with him one thousand men-at-arms and seventy-five kings' sons, these latter in order that they might be introduced to the khedive, and have the opportunity to study the life of a civilized city. He took also rich presents for the khedive, amongst them one hundred horses, four lions, two leopar's, and four parrots. On the way he was received with every demonstration of respect. The towns were decorated for his passage, the governors came out to meet him. "There was," he added, with a smile and a wave of the hand, nonsense-great nonsense of all kinds; it is not for that that I care." 66 And now would you like to know some thing? Would you like to know who killed Gordon? I will tell you. At the beginning of the English war in Egypt, Sir Evelyn Baring came to me with three generals. Sir Evelyn Wood was one of the three generals. I told them that to go to war was a great mistake, that all they could achieve would be to destroy cities and to terrify the people, who would rise and very likely massacre Gordon be. fore he could be reached. "If you believe me," I said, "let me manage this matter for you without bloodshed. My family and children are here. Keep them as hostages, and let me go up. I do not want any money, I will go at my own expense; I will go alone. There shall be no blood between you and the Soudan, and I will undertake to bring Gordon safely back. If I prove in any particular unfaithful, do what you will with my family." I made this offer five times. I urged it upon them in every way, for I knew that to march with armies into the Soudan was useless. But they did not believe me. They thought my desire was to work mischief, and they went their way. At that time I could have done all I prom- Ismail received him himself at Cairo ised. Gordon at Khartoum wanted to with equal honor, gave him a palace and have me sent up. I wanted to go up. If allowed £750 a month for his entertainI had gone Gordon would have come home ment, but Zebehr had not gone down for safe. Then who killed Gordon? Not the the purpose of being fêted and entertained. Soudanese. It was the English, who re. He wished to lay before the khedive an fused to let him have the friend he asked exposition of the true state of things in for. The English killed him, and why? Darfour, and to obtain a promise of supBecause they were like children, ignorant, port from the Egyptian government in frightened, and believing in evil.t the right administration of that province. It was in vain that he endeavored to approach this object. The khedive used to meet him in society and talk pleasantly upon general subjects; to requests for business interviews he replied always, "To-morrow." At last, after five months of waiting, the khedive granted the interview that he desired, and then instead of listening to Zebehr's report he said quite plainly: "It is of no use for us to talk together. I know you are a man of ability, I believe you would govern Darfour well, but frankly, I am afraid of you. You have The pasha put down to Idris Abtar's invention the greater number of the stories known to all who have read the commonly accredited English versions of his career. When they were laid before him he usually dismissed them with a shake of the head. "Another of Idris Abtar's. They are without end." But occasionally he entered into more detail of contradiction. When I told him of the letter encouraging his son Suleiman to revolt, generally reported to have been found among Suleiman's papers, he denied it absolutely. "The letter was never written by me. if it existed, why was it not brought and shown to me face to face, that I might The official account of this interview may be found in blue-book "Egypt," No. 12 (1884), p. 38. On this subject the reader may be referred to despatches contained in pp. 71, 72, 122, 135, 136, 137, and 145, "Egypt," No. 12 (1884). * Some injustice seems certainly to be done to Zebehr when he is held responsible for the state of Darfour as Gordon found it under Ismail Yacoub, and for the state of the Bahr-el-Ghazal as Gessi found it under Idris Abtar. It should be remembered that both these men were his opponents and rivals, one was his open enemy. Their views were the exact opposite of his; and by the action of the Egyptian government in de taining him at Cairo they were enabled to triumph. wrong, and if I had fled, the name of Zebehr would have been dishonored. I have kept it clear so far. I want to keep it clear to the end, and to have it said of me afterwards, 'Zebehr was a gentleman till he died.'' made yourself too powerful, and I fear | held me but my name; but I had done no that if I gave you the authority you desire you would set up an empire in Darfour which would rival and perhaps even subjugate Egypt. Egypt is not strong enough to tolerate neighbors so strong. Therefore resign yourself to live with me here in Cairo. I will treat you well, you shall be practically free, only you are to go back no more to the Soudan." Zebehr submitted, and this was the end of his work in those wild countries. It may well have been that the ease of existence, the more genial companionship, the stimulus of exercising influence at the heart rather than at the extremities of his country's political life, combined to reconcile him to his detention at Cairo. He told me much that was of interest with regard to his life there, but the story which I have proposed to myself to tell ends with his arrival in the capital. He has never revisited the scene of his former labors, but his prophecies with regard to the results of the Turkish system have come true Egypt has lost the Soudan. "If you were free now to go and govern it," I asked him once, "what would you do?" "Do not ask me to speak idly," he answered. "Twelve or thirteen years ago I could have told you. Now I have lost touch with the country. I do not know what my own family is doing in the neighborhood of Khartoum, much less what is being done in the countries further south and west. If I went into those countries it would be to go first quietly to my family, where I might consider affairs; then to travel as a merchant or pilgrim, talking with the people and inquiring on all sides. In that way I could judge of things generally and of my own power. After that I might come back and tell you, perhaps, what could be done. But if France or England were to offer me now some millions to go up and settle those countries I could not take it. If I were to accept such an offer I should be acting dishonestly, for I do not now know anything. I only hope. If I went back I hope I should find still many men of good sense in the country, and I should endeavor to bring it to order by means of the good sense which is in it. But to take money now on a definite pledge would be impossible. I am not a selfish nor an ambitious man. All that I want is to keep truth and to do good work. And I care for my name. Many times when I was in Cairo, friends desired me to fly to the desert. I was not kept there by bars and sentries. I was free to travel, and nothing It was, I think, on the same occasion that he accompanied me, when I took leave, as far as the gate. We stook talking while the sentry unfastened it, and, as the man bungled, a heavy iron bar clanged on the asphalte. I shivered a little nervously at the sudden noise. The pasha, observing me, said gently, "Do not think I am sorry, I am quite content." We spoke often about the English, of whom the pasha had, in two years of close intercourse, acquired some knowledge. He liked and admired them, and especially valued the integrity of English officials. He professed himself glad that the English people should know something of his history, and I can hardly perhaps end this part of it better than by quoting an estimate of them to which the news of his release, announced after these reminis cences had been thrown into shape, has since given a pleasant significance. far as my knowledge of them goes," he said one day, "I esteem the English to be an excessively ignorant people, but one which has so strong a natural bent towards justice that when they do know the facts they may be almost certainly trusted to act rightly." FLORA L. SHAW. "So From The Spectator. A STRANGE PLACE. ABOUT the worst way to see a town, more particularly a manufacturing one, is from the railway. You look out on shabby houses and smoking chimneys, and you think that a more unattractive place could hardly be found, even in England. Droit wich, seen from the station, is no exception to the rule. The eye rests upon dense clouds of smoke and steam, the streets and the station are poor, and it is with some slight effort that the visitor accepts the assurance that near at hand there are lovely lanes and fields, and that the town itself is not so bad after all, certainly not worse than most small manufacturing places. Droitwich is a place of great antiquity. To the Romans it was known as Salinæ, and the remains of a villa and fragments of tesselated pavements have been found near at hand. In the time of the Saxons | Had, however, the subsidence been uniit was called Wich, and that very appro- form over a large area, the appearance of priate name still clings to it in legal the town would not have been so much documents. It is only six miles from affected. Unfortunately, the sinking is Worcester, fourteen from Malvern, and very irregular, and some portions of the twenty from Birmingham, and is fairly town have sunk considerably, while others well supplied with a service of trains. seem little changed. A house standing in Two circumstances, however, make it fa- grounds of eight acres, called the Heriots, mous, its inexhaustible brine-springs, is said not to be affected at all, while an and the curious subsidence of the land orchard a couple of hundred yards off is going on somewhat irregularly over a large sinking. Again, in the Worcester Road area. It claims and perhaps correctly the sinking has been marked, and the to have the best and purest brine- walls enclosing the gardens there have in springs in Europe, and the proportion of places sunk until only the top rises above salt in the water exceeds, it is asserted, the surface of the ground. Near Queen that in any other salt-springs in the world. Street there are houses the roofs of which At any rate, while in ten thousand grains alone remain above ground, and in the of sea-water the solid constituents range High Street the sinking has been decided, from 410 grains in the Mediterranean, 380 especially in one part. We have already in the English Channel, 325 in the Ger- said that the subsidences are irregular; in man Ocean, to 168 in the Baltic, they other words, there are certain lines parallel reach 2,460 in the Dead Sea, and from to which the sinking is less and less rapid four thousand to four thousand two hun- the greater the distance from those lines, dred in the Droitwich brine. The salt- and consequently the houses lean towards springs, or wyches, rise from a depth of the lines of greatest subsidence; this in two hundred feet, through beds of new red time leads to wholesale destruction of sandstone and gypsum; the annual yield houses, and only the most careful supportof salt is over one hundred and fifteen ing keeps them from falling bodily. It is thousand tons, of which half is exported curious, however, that, so gradual is the to foreign countries. The preparation of sinking, cracks in the ground do not form the salt is simple, and not particularly and houses do not fall bodily, only one interesting. The brine is pumped up into cottage having given way for years, alreservoirs or tanks; from these it flows though houses and shops have sometimes into evaporating basins exposed to very to be taken down to keep them from fallgreat heat, and it is from the surface ing; in other words, the sudden sinkings of these pans that the clouds of steam that take place in some mining districts, rise which in part give the town the ap- and which cannot be guarded against, and pearance of being enveloped in smoke. which, when they do occur, mean the inThe wet salt is shovelled up from the stantaneous collapse of half a street, never bottom of the pans, and is put into long occur at Droitwich. It is said that in moulds, and then these moulds are placed twenty years the land has sunk nineteen in a warm, dry room, where the moisture feet in Queen Street. As it is necessary they contain is soon removed; the huge to keep the roads, streets, and yards level, bricks of salt are then turned out of the the rates are heavy, and street-repairing moulds, and are ready for use and expor- and raising are constantly going on; and tation. Trade has of late been dull, and thus it comes about that by levelling up the demand for salt limited, although the streets, the adjoining walls get at last Droitwich has fared no worse than many covered in with earth, for it must be noother places; and there are signs that, ticed that the houses and walls are not near the station more especially, the de- actually sinking into the ground, but they mand for new houses has been consider- are sinking, pari passu, with the ground, and getting covered with soil in conseWe have already pointed out that Droit-quence of the large quantities of the latter wich is not an attractive place seen from brought from a distance to keep up the the station, and a closer inspection of the old level. town accounts for the comparatively humble character of the shops and houses. The fact is, that the town is slowly sinking; the removal of vast quantities of brine, continuing as that has done for nearly two thousand years, sufficiently accounts for the subsidence of the land. able of late. Some parts of the old town show small signs of any change, and houses are pointed out that have stood a couple of centuries or more, and seem little the worse. One of the churches near the new post-office, however, is unused, being considered dangerous, and another, just out cases, is most beneficial, and that remark of the town, is very decidedly out of the perpendicular. Any permanent improve-able cures have been effected. It is some ment of the town is out of the question as long as the brine-springs are being worked, and as the trade and prosperity of the district depend upon them, we cannot wish that they should soon be exhausted. what unfortunate, though, that sufferers from the many forms of gout are too fond of confining their attention to medical treatment and change of air, forgetting that, however valuable these may be, still more can be hoped for from careful diet and simple and natural habits of life; otherwise the benefit of a visit to Droit wich soon passes away, and the sufferer is little better than he was before he vis It is rather curious to find large baths and handsome hotels in the midst of such surroundings; for be it said with all respect for the undoubted beauty and fertility of the neighborhood, Droitwich cannot compare, even in the estimation of its in-ited the town. habitants, with Malvern, Leamington, or Droitwich could be used as a very good Cheltenham. The explanation is, that centre for excursions, and the railway the Droitwich brine has long had a great communication places it within a short and deserved reputation in cases of rheu- run of Malvern, Bewdley Forest, Hereford, matism and gout; and of late, larger num- Gloucester, and Tewkesbury, where the bers than ever of visitors, some of them visitor finds much to interest him. Birpersons of high rank, have flocked into mingham and Wolverhampton, with their the town. The water is decidedly cold, vast factories and ceaseless hum of busiand requires heating; but if all one is told ness, are also so near that an hour will be true, its efficacy is perfectly marvellous. take the traveller into the heart of both. One of the resident physicians assured us After all, the sick of the richer classes that after sufferers from rheumatic gout must go to the places where they can get had had a bath, the water they had used the greatest relief; and as Droitwich is had been found on analysis to contain ap- not so unattractive as it at first sight preciable quantities of urate of soda, the appears, and as gout is not likely soon to materies morbi of gout. This statement cease to claim a large army of victims in startled us a good deal, or rather the ex- England, there is no doubt that the brineplanation offered, - that the solvent prop- baths of Droitwich will become better erties of the brine removed the urate of known, and attract larger and still larger soda from the tissues; it may be so, al-numbers of visitors every year. By the though the more probable explanation is, way, after using the baths a few times, the that it was washed off the skin. There skin becomes soft like velvet, and this is can, however, be no doubt that a course a certain proof that the action of the water of treatment at Droitwich, in suitable is very decided. corn, and cotton. All our cultivating, ditching, etc., is done by steam-power. We take a tract, say half a mile wide, for instance, and place an engine on each side. These engines are portable, and operate a cable attached to four ploughs, and under this arrangement we are able to plough thirty acres a day with only the labor of three men. Our harrowing, planting, and other cultivation is done in a like manner. In fact, there is not a single draught-horse on the entire place. We have, of course, horses for the herders of cattle, of which we now have sixteen thousand head. The Southern Pacific Railroad runs for thirtysix miles through our farm. We have three steamboats operating on the waters of our own estate, upon which there are three hundred miles of navigable waters. We have an ice-house, a bank, a shipyard, and a rice mill." THE LARGEST FARM IN THE WORLD.-In | land I found to be best adapted to rice, sugar, the extreme south-west corner of Louisiana lies the largest-producing farm in the world. It runs one hundred miles north and south and twenty-five miles east and west, and is owned and operated by a syndicate of Northern capitalists. Their general manager, J. B. Watkins, gives an interesting account of this gigantic plantation, which throws the great Dalrymple farm in Dakota into the shade completely. "The million and a half acres of our tract," Mr. Watkins said, "were purchased in 1883 from the State of Louisiana and from the United States Government. At that time it was a vast grazing land for the cattle of the few dealers of the neighborhood. When I took possession I found over thirty thousand head of half-wild horses and cattle. My work was to divide the immense tract into convenient pastures, establishing stations or ranches every six miles. The fencing alone cost in the neighborhood of $50,000. The Missouri Republican. |