LUPTON’S SURRENDER. 465 three brave Sudanese soldiers had fled to that place, and had even brought their rifles with them, one of them being Vonni, Lupton’s late orderly, a trustworthy man, who properly belongs to this province, but had followed Lupton to the Bahr-el-Ghazal. Well, these soldiers related at an official audience, that Lupton had been betrayed by his own men, who had been in league with the rebels for a long time; that the Danagla, directly after they had occupied the mudirié, had burnt all the books and Government documents, had opened and plundered the magazine, had seized all the arms and ammunition which they found in store or in the hands of the soldiers, and sold them to the highest bidder for money or slaves, and finally had put the soldiers in slavechains. The latter had their scanty food thrown down before them into a trough scraped out in the ground, and within the next few days were either reclaimed by some of the Danagla as their former slaves or were publicly sold. You may imagine how I congratulated myself on my decision not to go to the Bahr-el-Ghazal.

Immediately after the departure of the above-mentioned mission, Dr. Junker went towards the south, but remained in Dufilé, to await for a time the course of events. He was kind enough to take all my correspondence, intending to carry it with him, if necessary, by way of Zanzibar. I hope it may not come to that, but that he may yet take the route to the north. As I was making arrangements to send all the people, who are not wanted here, the so-called divan and its clerks, to Makraka, where, at any rate, there is abundance of corn, another event suddenly took place there which filled me not only with surprise but grief.

The head of the administration there, a certain Ibrahim Aga, of Khartum, who had hitherto always proved trustworthy, and therefore had been promoted by me step by step, though he was a Dongolaui, had, it appears, been engaged for some time in collecting the Danagla together from all the outlying _ points, while at the very time he was writing letters to me full of expressions of devotion and assurances of his undeviating faithfulness to the Government. He had pillaged the magazine in Wandi, and, through the agency of an Egyptian officer ‘who was devoted to him, he invited the few Sudanese soldiers 2G