Egypt and the Sudan 137
would have eventually to be sent. But the Cabinet held
out against the force of facts until late in the summer.
At last a credit was voted (August 8), and plans of cam-
paign discussed ; but it was not until Lord Wolseley left
Cairo (October 5) that it was officially recognised that
the expedition was to extricate Gordon. "The main
responsibility for the delay rests on Mr. Gladstone/'
writes Lord Cromer (Modern Egypt, Vol. L, p. 583).
If Gladstone had only shown as much stiffness against
interfering with 'c a people rightly struggling to be free *'
when the struggling people were civilised constitutional-
ist Arabists, as he now showed in favour of those slave-
dealing savages, the Mahdists, he would have saved his
own career and his country from a catastrophe.
When a very great man makes a very grave mistake
Fortune abandons him to the Furies. The Khartum
expedition was, from the first, dogged by ill-luck. The
steamer sent by Gordon down the Nile in September
with General Stewart, went ashore after safely running
the gauntlet of the gorges, and the invaluable Stewart
was murdered by treacherous villagers. The expedition,
starting too late, was still more delayed by an early fall
of the Nile. At Khorti it divided, one force under Sir
Herbert Stewart pushing across the desert direct, the
other following the Nile round to take Berber. Stewart's
force encountered the Dervishes at Abou Klea, where
the square was broken, and Burnaby, the second-in-
command, was killed (January 17, 1885) ; Stewart him-
self was sniped just before reaching the Nile at Gubat
(January 20). There the expedition met four steamers
sent down by Gordon, who reported the Fall of Khartum
imminent. But the impetus and initiative of the expedi-
tion were exhausted. Precious days were lost, and when
the steamers with reinforcements reached Khartum