The supposed sites of the holy places seem to have had peculiar fascination for his active brain, and he came to the conclusion that most, if not all, of them were wrong. It would, however, occupy too much space to give the reasons which led him to this conclusion. Though we cannot gather it from his own letters, a good deal of his time was more profitably spent than in hunting up old sites. Dr. Cunningham Geikie, who was in Jerusalem when Gordon was killed at Khartoum, tells us:-- "A poor dragoman told me that General Gordon used to come often to his house in Jerusalem when he and his wife lay ill, and that he would take a mat, and put it on the floor as a seat, there being no chairs or furniture, and sit down with his Testament to read and speak to them about Christ. Ascertaining that a doctor's account had been incurred, he went off secretly and paid it. He gave away all he had to the poor in Jerusalem and the villages round, and the people mourn for him as for their father." He made friends with some of the missionaries of the Church Missionary Society, with whom he found himself much in sympathy. Speaking of the Rev. J. R. L. Hall, he says, "I have found a nice man now here (Jaffa), but his mission is at Gaza. He is a Jew[10] by birth, but a man after my own heart. I may drop down there ere long and help him. He belongs to the C.M.S." [10] General Gordon was under a misconception as to the parentage of Mr. Hall. As a matter of fact this missionary is descended from a very old family in the county of Hampshire, and was no more related to that ancient race than the General himself.