While all these charges are being levelled at me, I am warned that if I dare contradict anything published formerly concerning myself or Soudan affairs, certain correspondence will be communicated to the London Press; yet what am I to do but contradict them wherever I can find a scrap of evidence to support my contradiction? Surely I cannot be expected to confirm such reports in the face of the threats made verbally and in the columns of a newspaper, especially as I and mine must remain the social outcasts we have been since my release, until my narrative appears. I am writing more in grief than in anger; these are all subjects I should have preferred not to mention in my narrative, and I am touching on them as lightly as is possible, but as others have chosen to publish them, by keeping silence I should be doing myself an injustice. My hand or tongue has been forced, therefore those who have taken the initial action against me must be responsible for the inevitable result which will follow when, questioned as to the foregoing by those entitled to ask for the evidence, I hand over for publication the whole of the correspondence. For the public, having been led to form opinions about me on the strength of the reports and explanations printed, have the right to |293| know the whole truth before pronouncing a second judgment; but my narrative ought not to be burdened with such a voluminous correspondence. Surely a kind Providence kept watch over the few documents which I have been fortunate enough to find after all these years, and which are of such value to me in substantiating my story. Amongst the many articles published concerning me, one printed in the London and Provincial papers on the 5th and 6th of September last caused me considerable injury in England and Egypt, and, maybe, irreparable injury in my native country, to which I have appealed for the rights of citizenship which my capture and long captivity precluded my returning to claim during 1887. To this appeal I have as yet received no answer—and little wonder. On the appearance of this article, some of my countrymen attacked me in no measured terms, and I was shunned by them as they would shun a pestilence. The communication made was on the presumable authority of General Hunter, as his name is mentioned; but so sure am I that he was no more capable of communicating such a report for publication than he is of turning his back in the face of an enemy, that I have not so much as written to him asking his denial. I was advised to allow these reports to accumulate and circulate, and reply to them _en bloc_ in my narrative, leaving a deceived public to take up the matter. The article I refer to reads as follows:―