New Spalding Club > House of Gordon > Gordons under arms

XXXVlll HOUSE OF GORDON.
and elaborated (in country newspapers) by the Editor of the House
of Gordon in pursuance of the policy foreshadowed by him in that work
ten years ago, of getting one's genealogical material out of the precarious
manuscript stage. The whereabouts of these elaborations are invari-
ably stated in the list of authorities appended to every biography, but
unfortunately the average reader will not be able to go to these sources,
for not a single library in Scotland professes to file more than one or
two of these journals, invaluable as they are as chronicles of the
countryside in all its activities.
Even with these subsidiary channels of information, much remains
to be told that was alien to the spirit of the present work : and a writer
with the skill of a Burton could add many companion volumes to the
Scot Abroad. For instance, there is the story of William Gordon — his
origin has escaped detection — who went on a Mission in 1739 to Shahu
Raja, the Maratha King of Satara, being asked to supply " eight guinea-
hens, two pairs of turkeys, some Bussora pigeons, a little mummy, and
a kind of curious birds ". Again there is the grim story of the massacre
of Patna, 1763, where, as a little paragraph in the Aberdeen Journal of
June 25, 1764, reminded its readers, Lieut. John Gordon, " son to Mr.
Gordon, of Dundurcus," had fallen, in the previous October, a victim
to the treachery of the dastardly Swiss " Sombre ".
Romance, of course, does not belong exclusively to yesterday : —
Confound Romance I . . . And all unseen
Romance brought up the nine-fifteen.
Only the other month the issue of the ponderous history (it weighs
40 lb.) of the Rajkumar College, at Rajkot, Kathiawar, recalled the
story of Harry Lawrence Gordon (1867-92), who began his career in the
Durham Light Infantry and then entered the Bombay Staff Corps. A
band of daring dacoits had infested the province for fourteen months.
Young Gordon, with some native men of the Agency Police, went out
one day against the marauders, twelve in number, and rounded them
up in their stronghold. He completely routed them, but fell with nine
bullets in his body. " We cannot all be Gordons," said Sir Charles Olli-
vant, the Political Agent, in addressing the students at the College :
" but what I ask you to consider is, how it is that in all these months of
outlawry there has not been found in any of the States which most