'Between this Cabinet and the next we received, on February 9th, a telegram from Baring to the effect that he was sending home a letter from Gordon to the King of the Belgians in which he urged the king to appoint him Governor of the Equatorial Provinces, Gordon's idea being to go there from Khartoum; and Baring stated his own view that we should forbid Gordon to go south of Khartoum. In his letter, which was dated February 1st, Gordon said that the King of the Belgians had told him that he would take over the Provinces with the troops in them, when Gordon had been at Brussels immediately before we sent him out; but not one word had Gordon ever breathed of this; and when we first heard of it he was virtually beyond our reach, seated, when our answer arrived, at Khartoum, and little disposed to listen to us, although on some points, for a few days, he pretended to listen. 'On February 12th Baring telegraphed that he hoped that "H.M.G. will not change any of the main points of their policy"; but, as will be seen a little later, Baring soon changed his own, adopting the new policy of Gordon, and pressing it upon us. 'On February 12th it was decided, against Mr. Gladstone, to send an expedition to the Red Sea Coast. 'On February 13th we had before us a statement which had been made the previous day by Randolph Churchill, to the effect that in the summer of 1883 General Gordon had offered to go to the Soudan, and that the Government had telegraphed to him accepting his offer, and then written to him declining it. Lord Granville instructed me to say that the whole story was one gigantic concoction. I then asked Hartington if he knew anything about it; and Lord Wolseley ultimately discovered that Randolph Churchill had confused the Congo with the Nile, an amusing example of his harum-scarum recklessness. Gordon had telegraphed from Syria in October for leave to accept service under the King of the Belgians on the Congo, and the Commander-in-Chief had replied by telegraph that the Secretary of State declined to sanction his employment. In transmission the word "declines" was changed into "decides," which exactly reversed its sense, so that Gordon had received a confirming letter consistent with the telegram as sent, but exactly reversing the sense of the telegram as received. He had told the story which Churchill had heard, but altered from one side of Africa to the other.'