Last Words with Gordon. By Lieutenant-General Sir Gerald Graham. (Chapman
and Hall )—This is a reprint, in the main, from the Fortnightly Review. Sir Gerald Graham saw Gordon at Cairo on January 25th and 26th, and accompanied him and Colonel Stewart up the Nile as far as %week°. They talked together over Gordon's mission, and their talk is here recorded ; bet, alas ! in a very faint outline. It is seldom that we know when we are listening to words which afterwards will become valuable beyond reckoning. Here is the little sketch of the teat sight of Gordon The place where I last saw Gordon is wild and desolate. The desert there is covered with a conies of volcanic hills, looking like a miniature Switzerland. But here were no fertile valleys, no bright snow. clad peaks, no thriving popnlation,—nothing between the hills but black basins and ravines, dry, dark, and destitute of all vegetation, looking like separate entrances to the pit where those who entered might leave all hope behind I climbed up the highest of these hills, and through a glass watched Gordon and his small caravan, as his camels threaded their way along a sandy valley, hoping that he would tern round that I might give him one more sign ; bet he rode on till he turned the dark side of one of the hille, and 1 saw him no more." How characteristic this last, for lie was not one who looked back !
Previous page
