The judgments on this land [Egypt] are on account of its cruelties in respect to the slave trade. - Charles George Gordon

I have learned with equal pain and indignation that the Khedive and his subordinate officers have permitted the resuscitation of the slave-trade in Darfour and the other provinces of central and equatorial Africa, and that fresh parties of slave-hunters are forming at Obeyed in Kordofan, and that every order which I gave concerning the suppression of this abomination has been cancelled... This news is very disheartening, especially when one realises the immense misery which will ensue to the remains of these poor tribes of helpless negroes.

We may be sure that at Candahar the spirit which induced children to kill or to attempt to kill our soldiers in 1879, &c., still exists, though it may be cowed. We have trouble enough with the fanatics of India; why should we go out of our way to add to their numbers?

I dwell on the joy of never seeing Great Britain again, with its horrid, wearisome dinner parties and miseries. How we can put up with those things passes my imagination! It is a perfect bondage. At those dinner parties we are all in masks, saying what we do not believe, eating and drinking things we do not want, and then abusing one another. I would sooner live like a Dervish with the Mahdi, than go out to dinner every night in London.