118 THE ABYSSINIAN FRONTIER hard labour, which was a " mercy " compared with the rough-and-ready justice of their captors.

In the old days of Egtian occupation the slave trade was enormous and lucrative. Khartoum was the central mart, possessed an immense population, and its wealth and prosperity were extreme.

Small wonder that, among a vast proportion of its present population, apart from racial and religious hatred, there exists a resentment, covert but intense, for the hiterference with a staple and highly profitable trade. Moreover, agriculture is suffering considerably owing to the impossibility of obtaining free labour at remunerative rates, and the "small holder" is being driven off his land. The sakieh, too, costs too much, and the native has not reached the level of appreciating an oil-engine and pump, as has happened in Egypt.

In English eyes such servitude is in itself abominable, apart from the horrors which are part and parcel of the system of recruiting. But it is questionable whether the native himself views slavery quite in the same light after the initial experience is passed, which experience, of course, was not invariable. The initial terror of slavery lies first in the taking of slaves, in the horrors of surprise, the destruction of home and disruption of families, the death by murder or starvation of those unfit or unrequired, and in the cruelties and mortality of the march. At the best of times, the negroid in this country is the slave of Nature, which oft turns against him. He has to fight in his home