— 109 — the same sense "that the chairman of the Army and Navy Stores is not a grocer or a gunmaker, or that a director of a goldmine is not a pick-and-shovel maker. But there can be little doubt that Zubeir regulated and protected and policed, and indirectl}' financed, the slave trade in the Equatorial Provinces; that this settlement—Deim Zubeir—was, as it were, the metropolis and the clearing house of the slave industry in that part of the world; that the considerable revenue he administered during the years of his power and rule in the Sudan was mainly levied on duties of different kinds and degree imposed upon the slave-dealers and caravans—Arab and Egyptian alike—and that his influence was due to his aptitude in systematising a common and lucrative industry. No doubt he was a large trader in other things, in ivory, gums, ostrich feathers, gold dust, precious stones, and, I think, rubber and hides to a small extent, but the pulse of the machine was the slave trade. "( I ) At the same time there are many indications that trade, chiefly in ivory, was the main object at which Zubeir aimed. After his conquest of Uar Fur, for instance, he asked to be allowed to go back to his calling of merchant; and one of the wishes he expressed in Gilbraltar was to be enabled to return (l) Slatin Pasha, to whom I showed this passage, remarks that far too much emphasis is placed here on the slave trade, which was more an incidental of his calling than the mainspring of it. ;