When we come to glance over his letters, and study them with the knowledge we now have, it transpires that in many of them he hints at troubles and dissensions among his troops, but led by his sanguine optimistic nature they were regarded too slightingly by us. People at home believed that they were but temporary ebullitions of discontent. We in Africa knew only that the 1st Battalion were implicated. Dr. Junker had not even deemed them of sufficient importance to mention--he only expressed a doubt that Emin would abandon his civilising mission and relegate himself to a useless life in Egypt as a retired Pasha, hence the doubt implied in the Khedive’s letter: “You may take advantage of Mr. Stanley’s escort, if you please; if you decline doing so, you remain in Africa on your own responsibility.” But Mr. Jephson, who is associated with Emin during our absence, no sooner finds himself within the military circles of the Province than it strikes him that the Pasha has kept us in ignorance of the “true state of affairs.” The dissatisfaction of Mr. Jephson culminates when he finds himself a prisoner, and finds leisure to ponder upon the unhappy prospect of being paraded through the streets of Khartoum as the Khalifa’s syce, or slave, and my own may be forgiven when I find by indisputable proofs that this might have been averted by the exercise of a little frankness and less reticence on the Pasha’s part. For had the Pasha informed me that he could not lead his troops to Egypt, nor accept the subsidy and pay offered him, nor accept the position under English auspices, because his troops had long ago cast off all allegiance and had become chronically disloyal, and that he really could not depend upon any one company of them, something else might have been proposed. It could not have been a difficult matter to have attacked every station in detail and reduced one after another to a wholesome dread of authority. It needed only firmness and resolution on the part of the Pasha. Had we begun at Mswa we should have found sixty soldiers led by Shukri Agha, who has as yet not been implicated in any disloyal act. These could have been embarked with our 300 on board the steamer, and we could have advanced upon Tunguru. In thirty minutes that station might have been settled, the disobedient shot, and marching with the prestige of authority and victory, Wadelai would have succumbed without the loss of a man except the ringleaders; and the other stations, hearing of these successive measures, would soon have been so terrified that we should have heard of nothing but capitulation everywhere. The Madhi’s troops being at one end of the line of stations and a resolute column advancing from the other end, these rebels would have had no other option than surrender to one or the other.