Arrived at Khartoum, he at once set to work to overthrow every tradition of Oriental rule. In less than a month he revolutionized the whole administration, abolished the courbash, checked bribery, arranged for a water-supply to the city, and commenced the disbandment of the Turks and Bashi-Bazouks, who, instead of acting as a frontier guard, favoured the passage of slave-caravans. In February, 1878, he was summoned by telegraph to the Egyptian capital to lend his aid in arranging the finances of the country, which had fallen into hopeless confusion. Reaching Cairo on the 7th March, he was received with every honour, and placed at table on the Khedive's right hand. He now fell into disfavour with the Egyptian Government. He was too much in earnest and spoke out too openly, and within a month started off in quasi-disgrace to inspect the south-eastern provinces of his government. After dismissing an old enemy, Reouf Pasha, from the governorship of Harrar, he made his way back to Khartoum by Souakim and Berber, and for months remained engaged in settling questions of finance and the affairs of the province. In July, 1879, Gordon received the news of the Khedive Ismail's deposition, and started at once for Cairo. He told Tewfik, the new Khedive, that he did not intend to go back to the Soudan, but he nevertheless accepted a mission to Abyssinia to settle matters with King Johannes. Physically worn out by his exertions, he came to England for a time, visiting on his way thither the ex-Khedive at Naples. On the appointment in May, 1880, of Lord Ripon to the Governor-Generalship of India, Gordon accepted the post of private secretary to the Marquis, but resigned it on the 3rd of June, feeling, as he expressed it, "the hopelessness of doing anything to the purpose." On the invitation of the Chinese authorities he soon afterwards left India for China, between which country and Russia differences had arisen, and after successfully exerting his influence in the maintenance of peace, left China the following August. In the spring of 1881 Gordon went to the Mauritius as Commandant of the Royal Engineers, remaining for a year, when he was made Major-General. In the following May he proceeded to the Cape to aid the Colonial authorities in solving the Basuto difficulty. Shortly after his return to England he left for Palestine, where he spent a year in retirement outside Jerusalem, devoting much time to proving, to the horror of pious tourists, that the commonly received "holy places" were not the right ones after all, and working out the scheme for a Jordan Canal. He then undertook a mission to the Congo River for the King of the Belgians, and only relinquished his post on the British Government requiring his services in the Soudan.