496 LETTERS TO DR SCHWEINFURTIL 



our own strength without any supplies from Khartum, and 

 not only did I spare the Government expense at this time, 

 hut also proved practically that the province could, under our 

 honest administration, yield a surplus, after providing for its 

 own expenses. I began to plant rice and sugar, to set in 

 order the administration, and to extend the boundaries of the 

 province. Yet who has given me even a good word ? Passons 

 la-dessus ! The late Sirdar Ekrem Omar Pasha once said to 

 me that in the East one must have powerful patrons, plenty 

 of money, or a pretty wife, in order to obtain acknowledgment 

 of one's services. Can he have been right ? 



Sir John Kirk has written me a very kind letter, and I am 

 indeed deeply grateful to him. He has moved heaven and 

 earth to assist me, has induced the Sultan of Zanzibar to write 

 letters to the King of Uganda and the Arab merchants, com- 

 mending me to their care, and has certainly done for me more 

 than his duty demanded. As to the letters from the mission- 

 aries to Junker, I have only to say that they were private 

 letters : there was a note for me on the margin of Kirk's 

 letter, telling me not to retreat hastily, and that they would 

 try to write to me. You can easily conceive with what 

 interest I ran over the despatches, if you call to mind that 

 the last news from Europe — in a letter from Dr. Hartlaub — • 

 reached me in the beginning of January, and the last from 

 Khartum in the beginning of February 1883, that is, exactly 

 three years ago. So now I had the whole of the sad drama before 

 me, which ended in Gordon's death, the retreat of the English, 

 and the loss of the Sudan, and it came back to my mind most 

 vividly how the editor of the Times had remarked in a note to 

 a communication from me that I took too gloomy a view of 

 the situation ; for I had warned the English not to think too 

 lightly of the state of affairs in the Sudan, and not to let 

 themselves be deceived by an illusory religious movement when 

 very different objects were really aimed at. Poor Gordon ! I 

 see in the despatch that he was killed by a volley on the way 

 to the Austrian Consulate ; and so Hansal also — the brave 

 Hansal — is probably numbered among the victims of these 

 unfortunate events. Besides the occurrences in the Sudan, I 

 find allusions to colonies started by the Germans in the west 



