Telegrams and letters have been received from Khartoum down to
April 1st. Up to that date, the Arabs were attacking General Gordon with little success, the General shelling them from the steamers, and they not having the confidence for an assault in force. In a letter of March 23rd, General Gordon informs a friend that he has requested the British Government to allow him to send the Egyptian soldiers to Berber under Colonel Stewart, and to sail away himself with the troops he has himself collected right up the White Nile "to the Equator,"—that is, we presume, to the Albert Nyanza. Thence he would march across a great stretch of country to the Congo, and from its border begin his task of suppressing the slave-trade. He has as yet received no answer to this request. The project seems dreamy, though it is possibly practicable ; but it does not in the least meet the British necessity, which, as Lord Hartington explained, is to provide such a government for Khartoum that the place shall not fall to the Mahdi, or other head of a fighting State. The proposal shows that General Gordon thinks himself quite beyond danger from his beseigers.
