General Gordon a Christian Hero (Paperback)

Excerpt: ...deal to ameliorate the lot of the people." Two days after this he passed through a place called St. Croix, which had been a Roman Catholic mission station, but so unhealthy was it that it had at last been abandoned. After thirteen years of work not a single convert had been made, although during that period the missionaries had plodded on in the face of discouragement, and in spite of the appalling havoc that death and sickness had made in their ranks. Out of twenty missionaries thirteen had died of fever, two of dysentery, and two had been invalided. A few banana trees were all that remained of the settlement at which these heroes had been sacrificed. Gordon reached Gondokoro on April 16th, just twenty-four days after leaving Khartoum. Everybody was much surprised to see him, for it was not even known that he had been appointed. He remained only six days, and then started back to Khartoum, in order to get his baggage. Not finding it there, he went on to Berber to hurry up the escort, but not till he had given the corrupt Governor of Khartoum a bit of his mind. "I have had some sharp skirmishing with the Governor-General of Khartoum," said he in a letter home, "and I think I have crushed him. Your brother wrote to him and told him he told stories. It was undiplomatic of me, but it did the Governor-General good." Having secured his baggage, he returned to Gondokoro. En route he writes from the entrance of the Sanbat River: -- "We arrived here from Khartoum a week ago, and I have made a nice station here, and made great friends with the Shillock natives, who come over in great numbers from the other side of the river. They are poorly off, and I have given them some grain; very little contents them. I have employed a few of them to plant maize, and they do it very fairly. The reason they do not do it for themselves is, that if they plant any quantity they would run the chance of losing it, by its being taken by force from them;...