Clan Gordon

“ On another occasion, about 600 Highlanders, belonging to the clan Gregor, clan Cameron, and other tribes, appeared near Frendraught, and openly declared that they had come to join Adam Gordon of Park, John Gordon of Invermarkie, and the other friends of the late Gordon of Rothiemay, for the purpose of revenging his death. When Frendraught heard of the irruption of this body, he immediately collected about 200 foot, and 140 horsemen, and went in quest of these intruders; but being scattered through the country, they could make no resistance, and every man provided for his own safety by flight. ”

“ The moral wildness which still clung to the Highlands was evinced by a rude incident which happened in the course of a deer-stalking adventure of Alexander Gordon of Dunkintie and his eldest son. Having gone into the savage wilderness at the head of Strathaven, the two gentlemen suddenly lighted upon a party of natives, believed to be of the Clan Chattan, who were70 sleeping upon the hillside. Suspecting these men to be rogues, the two gentlemen shot at them, and wounded one. The men then set upon Gordon and his son, and killed both, but not before two more of their party had fallen. ”

“ I could see fine how pleased he was at the Gordon connection, for when I told him Colonel William Gordon, son o' the Earl o' Aberdeen—him wha raised the Gordon Highlanders a matter o' three years syne—was my ain first cousin, he rose and kissed my hand and said he was proud to call Colonel Gordon his friend. And he knew a' about the Gordons and the warlike Huntleys, and could even tell me that the fighting force o' the clan was a thousand claymores; a most intelligent young man! And though I dinna like the thought o' an Englishman among the Gordons, there's a differ even in Englishmen ”

“ In the world as naturalist.
[E] Dick was both a geologist and botanist and was of great service to Hugh Millar.
[F] Edward is a shoemaker by trade, remarkable for his knowledge of the lower grades of animated nature.
CASTLE GORDON.
In youth we spent a pleasant day
Round Castle Gordon on the Spey,
There is no Clan can gird the sword on,
Can compare with the Clan Gordon,
In India, China and Soudan,
They manfully have led the van.
[Pg 135]
PRINCE CHARLIE'S GRANDSONS. Oft' times these handsome gentlemen appeared in the garb of old Gaul. ”

“ The delay in his company’s joining Loudoun is caused by all his clan vassals being ready, and he wishes the company to be all volunteers. He foresees that there will be occasion to convene all his men and he wants Rothiemurchus with him, and asks for certain alterations in the commissions to his officers. All the men of his company will have swords and most of them pistols and dirks. Hopes to capture Capt. Gordon, who is levying cess on his party as their arms will be useful. He is determined to let none of the clans now in motion enter his county.
[533] App. 17. John Grant in Urquhart to Mr. ”

“ Up and down the river he went, establishing some of the forts which he knew to be necessary if the slave-trade was to be put down. One day Abou Saoud brought him some letters written by a party of slave-dealers to the Egyptian governor of Fashoda, on the White Nile, half-way to Khartoum, saying that they would shortly arrive with a gang of negroes whom they had captured, and with two thousand cows, which they had also kidnapped, as was their custom. Gordon was ready for them; the cattle he kept, not being able to return them to their black owners, and the negroes he set free. ”

“ But the rifle was gone, and he had to smile as the little black boys mimicked the German's fright when he dropped the rifle and laughed in scorn at him.
At Rageef, seeing he need expect no real help from the Egyptian Government, Gordon began to form an army of his own, making soldiers of the Soudanese,—the "Gippies," as our own soldiers now call them. And the Gippies are as brave and soldier-like a body of troops as is to be found. "We," they say, "are like the English; we are not afraid." He enlisted men who had been slaves, and men who had been slavers. ”

“ Gordon felt that to make friends with those people, to show them that he was sorry for them, and that he wished to help them, was the first thing to be done if he was to be in reality their Governor. And so, as he travelled on from point to point—back to Khartoum from Gondokoro, to Berber, to Fashoda, to Soubat—he made friends wherever he went. Quickly the black people came to love the man who punished or slew their enemies, who took them from the slavers, and gave them back their wives and children and cattle. ”

“ On the way he rode into a swarm of flies that thickly covered him and his camel. Of his arrival at the little garrison he wrote to his sister: "I came on my people like a thunderbolt.... Imagine to yourself a single, dirty, red-faced man on a camel, ornamented with flies, arriving in the divan all of a sudden. They were paralysed, and could not believe their eyes."
Still more paralysed were the slavers when, at dawn next morning, there rode into their camp Gordon Pasha, radiant in the gorgeous "golden armour" the Khedive had given him. ”

“ They are all naked heathen, given to warfare and pillage, detesting work, and certainly not spiritually minded.
All of these people had been greatly exasperated by the slave-traders and by the garrison left at Gondokoro by Baker. The policy of the slave-traders had been to keep one tribe at war with another, and by allying themselves with one and the other to get much of the fighting done for them and to carry off the spoils in slaves, cattle and ivory. The Egyptian garrison had imitated the traders, and when Gordon went up it was practically besieged at Gondokoro. ”

“ Having taken from the ruffianly Arabs who had so cruelly treated the little children, their slaves, their stolen cattle, and their ivory, he would have them stripped and flogged, and driven naked into the desert.
For two months he was at Saubat River, a lonely and desolate country, the prey of slavers. It was so dull and dreary a place, that the Arab soldiers were sent there for a punishment, as the Russians are sent to Siberia.
But Gordon was too busy to be dull. He was always so full of thought for others, that he never had time to be sorry for himself. ”

“ He found that his Egyptian officials—some of them those he had most trusted—were leaguing with the slavers, taking bribes, helping to undo the good work he had already done, and trying to rouse his troops into mutiny. The troops themselves were a great trial. They were lazy, treacherous, chicken-hearted fellows, with no pluck. "I never had less confidence in any troops in my life," Gordon said, and he declared that three natives would put a whole company to flight. The native Soudanese were as brave as lions. A native has been known to kill himself because his wife called him a coward. ”

“ An uncle of Nar Wang begged Gordon to help him to take the women of Nar Wang's house to his own home, where they would be in safety. Unarmed as he was, Gordon did so, but when they got to the house of Nar Wang's uncle they found the courtyard filled with thousands of rebel soldiers. The doors and gates were shut at once, and Gordon was a prisoner. During the night more and more rebels came to the house. They all said that Li Hung Chang and Gordon had laid a trap for the Wangs and had taken them prisoners, but none knew exactly what had happened to them. ”

“ Along the banks of the canal the rebels, in clusters, were marching towards safety. On them the Hyson opened fire, puffing and steaming after them, and battering them with shells and bullets.
Like an angry little sheep-dog driving a mob of sheep, it drove the rebels onwards. Many lay dead on the banks, or fell into the water and were drowned. One hundred and fifty of them were taken as prisoners on board the Hyson.
When they were less than a mile from Soochow, as night was beginning to fall, Gordon decided to turn back and rejoin the rest of his forces. ”

“ This solitary man was engaged in as impossible a task as was that of Gordon when he undertook and set out for Khartoum, in 1884, to rescue the garrisons of the Soudan. He did brave things, but the bravest portion of his story is when this earnest-minded man lives among these lost people, and has to endure seeing his subjects robbed and despoiled whenever any officer apprehends scarcity and resolves upon a raiding expedition. He knows exactly what will happen; he knows there will be indiscriminate shooting and looting, he knows there will be destruction of villages and decimation of the owners ”

“ Now came the moment to which Gordon had long been looking forward—the life and death struggle with the slave-dealers, headed by Suleiman, son of Zebehr, [Pg 318] who had armed six thousand of his own slaves, and could besides summon the help of five thousand good soldiers. How thankfully, then, Gordon must have greeted the arrival of a powerful tribe seven thousand strong, who, having suffered bitterly from the slave-traders, were thirsting for revenge. ”

“ There was no other way of putting an end to the slave trade which at present was carried on by force of arms in defiance of law. When once brigandage had become a thing of the past, and when once a breach had been made in the lawless customs of long ages, then trade might be made free to all. If the men who had been in the pay of adventurers were willing to enter the service of the Government, Col. Gordon was to make all the use of them he could. ”

“ The forests were giving way, the region of swamp and bayou. The habitations of man were at hand, and when at last the dug-out was run into a plantation landing, and Kenneth Gordon was released from his cramped posture in that plebeian craft, he felt so averse to his mission, such a frivolous, reluctant distaste that he marvelled how he was to go through with it at all, as he took his way along the serpentine curves of the "dirt road," preceded by his guide, still with eyes averted and sullen mien, silently bearing his suit-case. ”

“ The Clanchattan, who, of all that faction, most eagerly endeavored to revenge the Earl of Murray his death, assembling their forces under Angus Donald Williamson his conduct, entered Strathdee and Glenmuick, where they invaded the Earl of Huntly his lands, and killed four of the surname of Gordon, Henry Gordon of the Knock, Alexander Gordon of Teldow, Thomas Gordon of Blaircharrish, and the old baron of Breaghly, whose death and manner thereof was so much the more lamented because he was very aged, and much given to hospitality, and slain under trust. ”

“ Thus he went about his work with complete unconcern, and one day arrived at a discontented place an hour and a half before the few hundred soldiers that formed his army. Nobody expected him, and when they saw a man in a uniform shining with gold, flying towards them on the swiftest camel they had ever beheld, and with only one companion, they were filled with amazement. Nothing would have been easier than to kill Gordon; but somehow they never even thought of it, and soon the people of Darfour and the neighbouring tribes came in and submitted to him. ”

“ When Gordon reached Gondokoro he saw that it was absurd to pretend that the Khedive ruled any of the country outside its walls. No one dared go half a mile outside without being in danger of his life from the tribes whose wives and children and cattle the slavers had taken. ”

“ The chief obstacle to a satisfactory arrangement being [Pg 34] thus removed, General Gordon hastened to have an interview with Ras Alula, and with this intention crossed the Abyssinian frontier, and proceeded to his camp at Gura. After an interview and the presentation of the Khedive's letter and his credentials, Gordon found that he was practically a prisoner, and that nothing could be accomplished save by direct negotiation with King John. He therefore offered to go to his capital at Debra Tabor, near Gondar, if Ras Alula would promise to refrain from attacking Egypt during his absence. ”

“ About the same time he wrote in a private letter, "Wives! wives! what a trial you are to your husbands! From my experience married men have more or less a cowed look."
It was on this occasion that Gordon was first brought into contact with the King of the Belgians, and had his attention drawn to the prospect of suppressing the slave trade from the side of the Congo, somewhat analogous to his own project of crushing it from Zanzibar. ”

“ In December 1883 he suddenly returned to London, and soon it was known that he was going, at the request of the King of the Belgians, to the Congo, to help to fight the slavers there. "We will kill them in their haunts," said Gordon. ”

“ Most of the slaves that the Arab slavers had in their gangs were little children. In one caravan that Gordon rescued there were ninety slaves, very few over sixteen, most of them little mites of boys and girls, perfect skeletons. They had been brought over 500 miles of desert, and the ninety were all that lived out of about four hundred. ”

“ Neither of his kinsmen was likely to prove a formidable foe. Rionga passed his hours in native excesses, in the joy of receiving the titular rank of Vakil to the Khedive. Anfina alienated Gordon's friendly feeling by suggesting the wholesale assassination of Kaba Rega's officers and followers when they came on a mission to his camp. Kaba Rega carried off the stool to the south, or rather the west, of Victoria Nyanza, and bided his time, while Mtesa wrote a half-defiant [Pg 159] and half-entreating letter to Gordon, asking him to spare Unyoro. ”