Ii8 
WILD BEASTS AND THEIR WA VS 
CHAP. 
chandise was looked upon as the ne plus ultra of 
purity and integrity; there could be no doubt of the 
quality of goods, provided that they were of English 
manufacture. 
An Englishman cannot show his face among those 
people at the present day. The myth has been ex¬ 
ploded. The golden image has been scratched, and 
the potter’s clay beneath has been revealed. This 
is a terrible result of clumsy management. We have 
failed in every way. Broken faith has dissipated 
our character for sincerity, and our military operations 
have failed to attain their object, resulting in retreat 
upon every side, to be followed up even to the sea¬ 
shores of the Red Sea by an enemy that is within 
range of our gun-vessels at Souakim. This is a 
distressing change to those who have received much 
kindness and passed most agreeable days among 
the Arab tribes of the Soudan deserts, and I look 
back with intense regret to the errors we have com¬ 
mitted, by which the entire confidence has been 
destroyed which formerly was associated with the 
English name. The countries which we opened by 
many years of hard work and patient toil throughout 
the Soudan, even through the extreme course of 
the White Nile to its birthplace in the equatorial 
regions, have been abandoned by the despotic order 
of the British Government, influenced by panic 
instead of policy; telegraphic lines which had been 
established in the hitherto barbarous countries of 
Kordofan, Darfur, the Blue Nile territories of 
Senaar, and throughout the wildest deserts of Nubia 
