In July 1875, Burton heard from Colonel (afterwards General) Gordon, who wanted some information about the country south of the Victoria Nyanza; and the friendship which then commenced between these brilliant men was terminated only by death. In every letter Gordon quoted Burton's motto, "Honour, not honours," and in one he congratulated his friend on its happy choice. For several years Gordon had been occupied under the auspices of the Khedive, in continuing the work of administering the Soudan, which had been begun by Sir Samuel Baker. He had established posts along the Nile, placed steamers on the Albert Nyanza, and he nursed the hope of being able to put an end to the horrid slave trade. In January 1877, he was appointed by the Khedive Governor of the entire Soudan. There were to be three governors under him, and he wrote to Burton offering him the governor-generalship of Darfur, with £1,600 a year. Said Gordon, "You will soon have the telegraph in your capital, El Fasher.... You will do a mint of good, and benefit those poor people.... Now is the time for you to make your indelible mark in the world and in these countries." 301

Had such an offer arrived eight years earlier, Burton might have accepted it, but he was fifty-seven, and his post at Trieste, though not an agreeable one, was a "lasting thing," which the governor-generalship of Darfur seemed unlikely to be. So the offer was declined. Gordon's next letter (27th June 1877) contains a passage that brings the man before us in very vivid colours. "I dare say," he observed, "you wonder how I can get on without an interpreter and not knowing Arabic. I do not believe in man's free will; and therefore believe all things are from God and pre-ordained. Such being the case, the judgments or decisions I give are fixed to be thus or thus, whether I have exactly hit off all the circumstances or not. This is my raft, and on it I manage to float along, thanks to God, more or less successfully." 302

On another occasion Gordon wrote, "It is a delightful thing to be a fatalist"—meaning, commented Burton, "that the Divine direction and pre-ordination of all things saved him so much trouble of forethought and afterthought. In this tenet he was not only a Calvinist but also a Moslem." 303