THE SLAVE-TRADE EXTINCT. 505 be carried on with less difficulty than hitherto. What has become of Dr. Lenz? I have heard nothing about him. Perhaps it is because I have been temporarily obliged to abandon the Monbuttu district. ...

I wrote you in a former letter that I had made up my mind to hold on here, and explained to you fully in that letter my reasons for so doing, and my hopes and plans for the future of this land. I repeat what I then said; I shall remain here, and hold together as long as possible the remnants of the work of the last ten years. If help comes to me from any side, so much the better; if not, at least I will fall on the field where my work has been accomplished. I am sorry to be obliged to contradict the opinion which Stanley and Schweinfurth -have expressed, “that now the slave-dealers are overrunning this country, and that the Negroes have more to suffer than they used to have.” Since the retreat of Keremallah and the destruction of himself and of all his people on the borders of Kordofan, everything has remained in perfect peace, and indeed the war has in some respects done good, for the whole of the Bahr-el-Ghazal district has been totally freed from the slave-dealers, who, according to the above account, were said to be following unchecked their nefarious traffic. In the whole of the Bahr-el-Ghazal, I repeat, there is to-day no single Khartumer remaining. It is true that a few of Lupton’s old Negro soldiers are still there, but they are living peaceably with the natives. In my province I have only sixty-two Danagla left, and I am quite able to prevent them committing any excesses. The reoccupation of these districts, which have been temporarily given up, could be carried out with the greatest ease, and if we could only get a few caravans sent vid Mombasa, Masai, Masala,* Wakori,f and from thence either here or to Kabréga, it would be all that we want. Naturally, the old Egyptian system of plunder must never be revived, but the natural resources of the land must be cultivated in a proper manner, and that too could easily be * Masala was the farthest point reached by Thomson at the north-east corner of the Victoria Nyanza.

+ The Wakori are a tribe through which Bishop Hannington passed. They inhabit a district on the northern shore of the Victoria Nyanza.—h. W. F.