Gordon reached Gondokoro on April 16th, just twenty-four days after leaving Khartoum. Everybody was much surprised to see him, for it was not even known that he had been appointed. He remained only six days, and then started back to Khartoum, in order to get his baggage. Not finding it there, he went on to Berber to hurry up the escort, but not till he had given the corrupt Governor of Khartoum a bit of his mind. "I have had some sharp skirmishing with the Governor-General of Khartoum," said he in a letter home, "and I think I have crushed him. Your brother wrote to him and told him he told _stories_. It was undiplomatic of me, but it did the Governor-General good." Having secured his baggage, he returned to Gondokoro. _En route_ he writes from the entrance of the Sanbat River:-- "We arrived here from Khartoum a week ago, and I have made a nice station here, and made great friends with the Shillock natives, who come over in great numbers from the other side of the river. They are poorly off, and I have given them some grain; very little contents them. I have employed a few of them to plant maize, and they do it very fairly. The reason they do not do it for themselves is, that if they plant any quantity they would run the chance of losing it, by its being taken by force from them; so they plant only enough to keep body and soul together, and even that is sown in small out-of-the-way patches." He reached Gondokoro the second time on September 4th, receiving the salaams and salutes of the officers, men, and functionaries, together with the submission of all the neighbouring chiefs. In the whole of his province Egypt had only two forts, one at Gondokoro, the capital, with 300 men, and one at Fatiko, further south, with 200 men. "As for paying taxes," said he, "or any government existing outside the forts, it is all nonsense. You cannot go out in any safety half-a-mile, all because they have been fighting the poor natives and taking their cattle. I apprehend not the least difficulty in the work; the greatest will be to gain the people's confidence again. They have been hardly treated." The chief culprit, to whom much of this misgovernment was due, was Raouf Bey, whom Gordon found at Gondokoro. This man had been in office for six years, and proved a miserable failure. "Raouf had never conciliated the tribes, never had planted dhoora; and, in fact, only possessed the land he camped upon." Yet he made it a grievance that Gordon refused to employ him, and the present Khedive of Egypt many years afterwards made him Governor-General of the Soudan when Gordon resigned.