sulted among themselves whether to take him alive or not. They decided to kill him, because, as they said, if they took him alive to the Mahdi he would be spared, and, as he was the cause of all the trouble, he ought to be killed. There is another story, that the Mahdi allowed Gordon to escape to the southward, and on more than one occasion it has been asserted that this remarkable soldier of fortune is yet living in the equatorial region of Central Africa, but so closely watched that he cannot communicate with the outer world.
After the fall of Khartoum and the death of Gordon, the English made no attempt to advance farther up the Nile. The troops were slowly withdrawn, the construction of the Suakim-Berber railway was suspended, and the British forces in Egypt contented themselves with retaining possession of such portions of the country as were not embraced in the conquests of Mohammed Ali and his successors. By the fall of Khartoum, the Soudan was restored to its former independence and relieved from the misrule and oppression of the pashas. The dominion of Egypt has been driven from the region of the equatorial lakes to that of the lower Nile, and the time is probably far distant when it will be restored.
