GUM AND IVOET. 387 On both these articles there is generally a good, sometimes a great, profit. The gum comes almost entirely from Korclofan, where the quantity annually gathered amounts to thirty thousand contar, or cwt. It is collected by the natives from that variety of the mimosa called the asliaba, and sold by them at from fifty-five to sixty piastres the contar. Lattif Pasha at one time issued a decree prohibiting any person from selling it at less than sixty piastres, but Dr. Keitz, by an energetic protest, obtained the revocation of this arbitrary edict. The cost of carrying it to Cairo is very nearly fifty piastres the contar, exclusive of a government tax of twelve and a half per cent. ; and as the price of gum in Cairo fluctuates according to the demand from one hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty piastres, the merchant's gain may be as low as ten or as high as one hundred per cent. The gum brought from Yemen and the shores of the Red Sea is considered superior in quality, but is not produced in such abundance.

The ivory is mostly obtained from the negro tribes on the White Nile. Small quantities are occasionally brought from Dar-Fur and the unknown regions towards Bornou, by Arab caravans. The trading expeditions up the White Nile, until the winter of 1851—2, were entirely under the control of the Pasha of Soudan, in spite of the treaty of 1838, making it free to all nations. The expedition of that winter, which sailed from Khartoum about two months before my arrival, consisted of seven vessels, accompanied by an armed force. The parties interested in it consisted of the Pasha, the Egyptian merchants, and the rayahs, or European merchants. The gains were to be divided into twenty-four parts, eight of which went to the Pasha, nine to the Turks and seven to the Franks. Dr.