302 



GORDON 



See FOCHABEKS. There is a MS. Histories. Com- 

 pendium de Oriyine et Incremento Gordonice Familite 

 (1545), by an Italian monk, Ferrerius ; a MS. Origo 

 et Progressus Families Illustrissimce Gordoniorum in 

 Hcotia, by Gordon of Straloch (died 1661.) ; and 

 histories of the house by William Gordon (1727) and 

 C. A. Gordon (1754). See the more valuable Geneal- 

 ogie and Pedigree of the Earls of Sutherland (which 

 has much on the Gordons), by Sir Robert Gordon of 

 Gordonstoun ( written 1639, published 1813, with continu- 

 ation ). 



Gordon, ADAM LINDSAY, the first of Aiis- 

 tralian poets, was born at Fayal in the Azores 

 in 1833, the son of a retired army-captain. At 

 twenty he sailed to Adelaide to push his fortune, 

 and tried in turns, but without success, sheep- 

 farming, 'over-landing,' and cattle-driving in South 

 Australia, emerging to light in Melbourne as the 

 best gentleman steeplechase-rider in the colony. 

 His broken circumstances and religious hopeless- 

 ness deepened the natural gloom of his tempera- 

 ment, and at length he threw up the struggle, and 

 blew out his brains at Brighton, a marine suburb 

 of Melbourne, 24th June 1870. He had published 

 in 1867 Sea-spray and Smoke-drift, a very unequal 

 volume, yet containing a few admirable lyrics 

 reflecting closely the sombre colour of his life and 

 the passionate despair that at last drove him to the 

 refuge of death. His Ashtaroth, a Dramatic Lyric 

 ( 1867 ), was an ambitious attempt at a task for 

 which his powers were inadequate, only relieved 

 from absolute failure by the beauty of the lyrics 

 with which it is interspersed. His last volume, 

 Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes, appeared, 

 it is said, on the very day of his unhappy death, 

 with a dedication to Major Whyte-Melville. The 

 opening poem, 'The Sick Stock-rider,' is a marvel- 

 lously vivid transcript from the bush-life he knew, 

 steeped with the irresistible pathos of reality. 

 ' How we beat the Favourite ' is said to be the 

 most popular poem in Australia, and certainly it is 

 the best ballad of the turf in the English tongue, 

 unequalled in its kind for fire and speed. 



See A. P. Martin's article in Temple Bar for 1884 (vol. 

 Ixx. ), Marcus Clarke's introduction to the complete edition 

 of Gordon's poems, and D. B. W. Sladen's Australian 

 Poets (1888). 



Gordon, CHARLES GEORGE ('Gordon Pasha'), 

 was born at Woolwich, 28th January 1833, fourth 

 son of General Gordon, Royal Artillery, by his wife 

 Elizabeth Enderby, and descended from the Gordons 

 of Park, a cadet branch of the House of Huntly. 

 From school at Taunton he passed in 1847 to the 

 Military Academy, Woolwich ; in 1852 entered the 

 Royal Engineers ; and saw his first active service 

 in the trenches before Sebastopol, where he served 

 from January 1855 to the end of the siege, being once 

 slightly wounded. After the fall of the south side 

 Gordon proceeded to Kinburn, returned again to 

 Sebastopol, arid was employed in the demolition of 

 the docks and destruction of the forts ; and he was 

 subsequently engaged in surveying the new frontier 

 between Turkey and Russia in Europe and Asia. 

 In 1860 he went to China and took part in the cap- 

 ture of Peking and the destruction of the famous 

 Summer Palace near that city. In 1863 he was 

 appointed to the command of a Chinese force 

 officered by Europeans and Americans, and during 

 that and the following year was engaged almost 

 incessantly against the Taiping rebels in the rich 

 provinces of Cheh-kiang and Chiang-su. In two 

 campaigns he fought thirty-three actions and took 

 numerous walled towns, crushing the formidable 

 rebellion which had so long wasted the fairest pro- 

 vinces of China. This feat of arms achieved in the 

 space of eighteen months, and at a cost of only 

 200,000, placed the young major of engineers in 

 the foremost rank of the soldiers of his day. 



Returning from China in 1865, ' as poor as when 

 he had entered it,' he was appointed to the ordi- 

 nary engineer duties at Gravesend, where he 

 remained for six years, devoting the greater part 

 of his spare moments to relieving the want and 

 misery of the poor, visiting the sick, teaching, 

 feeding, and clothing the many waifs and strays 

 among the destitute boys of the town, and provid- 

 ing employment for them on board ship. In 1872 

 he quitted Gravesend for Bulgaria, where he re- 

 mained as commissioner on the Danube for nearly 

 two years. 



At the close of 1873 he accepted employment 

 under Ismail, Khedive of Egypt, and, proceeding to 

 the Soudan, took up the work which Sir Samuel 

 Baker had begun two years earlier that of open- 

 ing up the vast regions of the equatorial Nile, and 

 the lakes which recent exploration had discovered. 

 In these distant and unhealthy regions he remained 

 for three years, overcoming by extraordinary energy 

 and resolution all difficulties of nature, hostile man 

 and climate. A chain of posts was established along 

 the Nile ; steamers were brought from Egypt in 

 sections, put together above the last rapid, and the 

 navigation of Lake Albert Nyanza successfully 

 accomplished. Underlying all this labour there 

 was in Gordon's mind a purpose beyond gain or ex- 

 ploration. It was the abolition of the slave-trade 

 which heretofore had been the one great object of 

 Soudanese commerce. Discovering that his efforts 

 to suppress this trade must remain unsuccessful 

 unless his power extended to the vast plain coun- 

 tries lying west of the Nile basin Kordofan and 

 Dar-Fur Gordon returned to Egypt and England 

 in 1876. 



Going out again in January 1877, he was 

 appointed by the Khedive sole governor of the 

 entire Soudan, with unlimited powers over a 

 region that stretched from the second cataract 

 of the Nile to the Great Lakes, and from the 

 Red Sea to the head-waters of the streams that 

 fall into Lake Tchad. During the next three 

 years he traversed in all directions this vast 

 territory. Now he was settling a frontier dispute 

 with the Abyssinian feudatories in the east ; now 

 swooping down with scanty escorts upon some 

 slave raider or rebellious chieftain in western 

 Dar-Fur. For months together he seemed to live 

 on the back of his camel. Neither the numbers of 

 his enemies nor the fiercest sun of terrible deserts 

 could check his energy. His presence, multiplied 

 by incessant toil into twenty times the reality, 

 awed the wild tribes into obedience, and for the 

 first time in its history the Soudan seemed to feel 

 that law and justice were united with government. 

 Early in 1880 all this ceased. Gordon resigned his 

 command. A great change was coming in Lower 

 Egypt, and it was evident that under the new 

 system which was being inaugurated at Cairo 

 there could be no place for such a master. A short 

 visit to India, continued on to the old scene of his 

 first famous enterprise in China, filled up the 

 greater portion of 1880 ; but the close of the year- 

 found Gordon in Ireland intent upon relieving the 

 almost chronic unhappiness of that island. Struck 

 with the terrible scenes of poverty which he wit- 

 nessed in the south and west of the island, he 

 propounded a scheme of land-law improvement, 

 which, although then met with ridicule or silerrce, 

 has since been largely made the basis of legisla- 

 tion ; but these views did not tend to make their 

 holder acceptable in the eyes of authority, and, to 

 escape the necessity of accepting some insignificant 

 routine appointment at home, Gordon volunteered 

 to take another officer's duty in the Mauritius, 

 where for another year he remained unnoticed and 

 unthought of. 



From Mauritius Gordon proceeded to the Cape 



