Promoted to major-general on 23 March 1882, Gordon was sent to the Cape to aid in settling affairs in Basutoland, but he returned to the United Kingdom after only a few months. The principle problem faced by Gordon in South Africa was Basutoland (modern Lesotho), a small kingdom whose ruler, King Moshoeshoe had decided to have his nation become a British protectorate rather than be annexed by the Orange Free State. One of Moshoeshoe's sons, Prince Masupha had rebelled in protest against his father's plans. Before settling out on a trip to mediate the end of the civil war in Basutoland, Gordon met with Cecil Rhodes in Cape Town to seek his advice. Rhodes later recalled he and Gordon got along "capitally together". After arriving in Basutoland, Gordon met with Prince Masupha to persuade him to lay down his arms and to accept his father's protectorate plan rather than have his kingdom annexed to the Orange Free State. Faught wrote that Gordon was only in South Africa for a short time, but one of his enduring legacies is the existence of Lesotho, which otherwise would have been annexed to the Orange Free State. After his return from South Africa, Galbraith remarked that Gordon had a "strange combination of melancholia, resignation and mysticism" that he was destined by God both to do something great and to die soon. During this time, Leopold who was most anxious to fire Stanley with his ever-increasing demands for more money, constantly wrote to Gordon asking him to be his agent in the Congo. Gordon had come to distrust Leopold, but he came to believe that perhaps he could do some good in the Congo. Being unemployed, Gordon decided to go to Palestine which at the time was part of the Ottoman "vilayet" of Syria, a region he had long desired to visit, where he would remain for a year (1882–83). During his "career break" in the Holy Land, the very religious Gordon sought to explore his faith and biblical sites. In Jerusalem, Gordon lived with an American lawyer Horatio Spafford and his wife Anna Spafford, who were the leaders of the American Colony in the Holy City. The Spaffords had lost their home and much of their fortune in the Great Chicago Fire and then had seen one of their sons die of scarlet fever, four of their daughters drowned in a shipwreck followed by the death of another son from scarlet fever, causing them to turn to religion as consolation for unbearable tragedy, making them very congenial company for Gordon during his stay in Jerusalem.