190 UGANDA AND THE EGYPTIAN SOUDAN.

road towards civilisation for a number of wants to be created by the introduction of articles of foreign manufacture which can only be supplied from external sources. They require cloth, beads, guns, powder, shot, brass wire, etc., which can only be procured from the Arab traders, and the only two things with which they can purchase them are ivory and slaves : the supply of ivory is limited, and is steadily on the decrease, as the elephants are killed off, and so they sell their slaves. These causes will also operate to increase the slave traffic unless some external check is put upon it, for the wants of the people increase year by year, and the Arabs are always glad to take slaves, as they are more profitable than other kinds of merchandise.

Consequently there is a continual drain on the slave population, which is already beginning to make itself felt. And if the bad policy of the traffic is represented to the Waganda in this light, they acknowledge it at once, but reply " We must have guns and gunpowder and cloth, and we have no ivory to buy with, so we must sell our slaves." The only hope of really checking this nefarious trade is by introducing legitimate commerce, and as in this the Arabs cannot successfully compete with Europeans they would soon be starved out of the country. The principal of these Arab traders is one Mohammed bin Ibrahim, who has been some twenty years in Uganda. Said bin Salem, the governor of Unyan-