248 THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

ivory, they could find no market for it till they had got it carried to the Nile and shipped to Egypt. In a country where there are no roads, human porterage is the only cheap method of transporting produce for long distances. The Dervishes either raided the villages or took part in local wars between savage tribes, and by fraud or force obtained large numbers of captives. These captives were loaded with ivory, driven as beasts of burden under the lash to the Nile, and there left for the most part to starve. A few of the younger and better looking were sent down for sale to Egypt or Tunis. But the staple of the slave trade of the Soudan was the demand for porterage. The only way in which this trade can ever be really suppressed is either by a permanent military occupation, such as exists at present, or by the development of roads and railroads, so as to provide an easier and cheaper mode of transport than that of catching savages and converting them into pack-horses.

Roads and railroads, however, require capital for their construction. Egypt had no capital to spare, and Gordon set his face against the entrance of Europeans into the country. The pioneers of civilization are not, as a rule, a very estimable or high-minded body of men. But foreign capital will never come into a country which has not first been overrun and exploited by pioneers. Gordon, however, kept the Soudan within a ring fence, and contented himself with hanging, capturing, or ruining as many slavetraders as he could lay hands upon during his