At the end of his Governor-Generalship of the Sudan, Gordon had to admit that he had been a failure, an experience of defeat that so shattered him that he had a nervous breakdown. As Gordon travelled via Egypt to take the streamer back to Britain, a man who met him in Cairo described Gordon as a broken man who was "rather off his head". Before Gordon boarded the ship at Alexandria that was to take him home, he sent off a series of long telegrams to various ministers in London full of Biblical verse and quotations that he claimed offered the solution to all of the problems of modern life. After Gordon resigned, Muhammad Rauf Pasha succeeded him as governor general of Sudan.