470 LETTERS TO DR. SCHWEINFURTH.

the Tonj—there may, then, be a zertba standing beside this stream, and named after it. Communication between Sabi and Jur Ghattas, and between the latter and Dem Soliman, is said to be interrupted entirely. So my mission to Keremallah is now reposing in Sabi, and long may their rest continue!

August 31, 1884. vents have progressed a little. I had had no news from our station of Bor since the departure of the steamer in April 1883, and I was in constant dread lest it should have shared the fate of Shambé, which was overpowered by the Negroes and destroyed. Some attempts to get letters forwarded there through Bufi by the Elyab people failed. At last I had recourse to Befo, the Bari chief of the Belinian mountains near Gondokoro, and offered him a large reward if he would send a letter to Bor. He agreed to do so, and I handed him my despatch on July 26. ‘To learn the fate of the Bor people was not my only object. When Shambé was in great straits, I had sent off the largest and best of my barges there with corn, ammunition, men, and one officer, and I had heard no more of it since. Imagine, then, my delight when, on the evening of August 24, a sergeant and eleven soldiers arrived here from Bor, bringing the postal arrears and the best of news. Not only was all going on excellently in Bor, but the barge is there undamaged, and some men have escaped from Shambé. ‘The soldiers, led by Befo’s man, had marched from Bor to Gondokoro in six days along the eastern bank of the river, and had everywhere been well received by the Negroes. But the most surprising information came from the commander of the Bor station, who writes as follows in a postscript to his latest official despatch :—“I hear from some Tuj men, who are now here (in Bor), that the river is blocked, and that several steamers have come from the north, but have gone back again to Fashoda.” I have immediately made this news known to all my people by a circular; whether true or not, it will inspire them with fresh courage. When I was in Khartum, I begged Abd-el-Kader Pasha, a very well-disposed man, to grant me asteamer for Lado, and to assign the station