AN INTERVIEW WITH ONE OF GORDON’S MEN.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1237, 13 November 1885, Page 3

AN INTERVIEW WITH ONE OF GORDON’S MEN.

The Cairo correspondent of ihe * Standard’ writes on 18th August Yesterday Captain Montgomerie arrived in Cairo on the steamer Nil, bringing down with him 14 of Gordon’s men picked up at Dongola. Most of ihese were not regular soldiers, but sailors, stokers, lir- men, etc Captain Montgomerie had been much struck during the voyage down to Cairo with the patience and good behaviour of these men, and instanced their physical courage by quoting the case of a man who had been shot through the shonlder nine months ago, but who had never mentioned his wound until the day of his arrival in Cairo, On deck 1 found a master smith (and soldier) who appeared to have a tolerably clear re* collection of the events of the siege. He said that one of Gordon’s great mistakes was his too great confidence in scamps. Farag Pasha, for instance, he liberated from the chains and promoted to be a pasha. He had been twice degraded and imprisone I by the late Khedive, the first time at F.ishoda and the second at Khartoum. Ho was always working against Gordon. 1 remember shortly before the fall of Khartoum he read aud circulated a paper which lie said was signed by Gordon, to'the effect that there were no more victuals in the town, and nothing was left but to surrender. Th“re were many other inferior officials of the same stamp. “ The sec md great mistake was in sending our steamers to Metemneh to meet the English. As long as we were there with our fleet the rebels could never get near the place. All our steamers are gone now almost. Wo ued to build them and mend them there as well as you could do here in Cairo. They were a tine serviceable flotilla. When we went down to Metemneh, Gordon came out ia front of the palace and spoke to us iu Arabic, which he had learned pretty well. He said we were sure to find the English either at Metemneh or Shendy, and if we did not find them on the first day of our arrival we were not to be discourage l, but they were certain to be there the next. When we got down to Metemneh we were fired upon from all sides. We lost two of our five strainers on the way down. We lauded some of our guns and mounted +hem on high places, and held our own, according ■to our instructions, till the English came. Then we heard that Khartoum had fallen. Ail our wives and families and possessions are or were in Khartoum. I have not even got my Gordon medal. If only the English had pushed on a little quicker they would have got there before Gordon conceived the unfortunate i lea of sending away his steamers to meet them. The Arabs were thoroughly frightened after Abuklea, and the Hu dish could have come up easily, I think.”

I asked him about Stewart, whom he called Stouarie Pasha, and he said : “ Yes ; I went down in one of the boats with him. We wanted him to keep to the main branch of the river, hue he insisted on g..i ig down the channel where ha stuck. We knew he had been murdered, but wo haruly dared to toll Gordon so. We did, however, bathe would not believe us for au instant, and laughed at the story, doc aring that Stewart was in the English camp long ago. So we did not insist, hut lot him continue iu his belief.

■' -I asked him about Hassan and Said Pashas, whom Gordon declares in his diary to have been “judicially murdered,” and adds, “ If it had not been for outside influences, they would have been alive now. The man’s story, howevei, exculpates Gordon from his quasi self-accusation, and at the same time seems to throw some light on the ambiguous terms in which Gordon alludes to the event. He says : “The pashas not only broke their own men and let the enemy in, but they killed many of them with their own hands. Their tents, too, were found full of ammunition leady to hand over to the enemy.” The soldiers all Went to Gordon in a great rage and de-> manded justice, and Gordon promised that the matter should be inquired into. In the evening he gave secret orders for the pashas to be taken away somewhere, and. put out of the city if possible. Hut even before his orders reached the soldiers they had taken them out o f his custody, and killed them in the presence of the wdiolo regiment. They told Gordon the pashas could not be found, but he knew they had bo killed.” I asked if it was not by the express order of Gordon and after a court-martial that they had been executed'. He said the soldiers may have had a sort of court-mania 1 , but that Gordon did not, ho believed, even know

they wero killed’till after they. wore 'dead, and that the next morning Said Pasha’s son came to Gordon and reproached him with having killed his father, and Gordon answered him that he had not killed him at all, but that he hid disappeared.”