SHILLUK, NUBA, TAKELE, ETC. 183 these slaves, he pretended to have received orders from the officer commanding the troops of the borders to convey the girls to Cairo. The governor demanded a proof in writing, but the corporal pretended to have lost his passport. This circumstance, and the assertion of the twice-stolen girls, corroborating the suspicion that he had kidnapped them, and deserted from the ranks, he received the punishment he richly deserved. The girls were now given in charge to a sergeant's >vife, and told they should be sent with the next transport back to their father's friend, the commanding officer of the Eg}q)tian troops on the borders, who would then see them forwarded to their parents ; but this good fortune was not their fate. The sergeant, to whose care they were inti-usted, happened to meet a Djelabi one evening in a certain house, he waked the girls out of their sleep at night, told them to prepare for their journey home, and led them to the banks of the blue Nile, where they were ferried across, and immediately mounted on a camel standing in readiness to receive them. Early the next day they were delivered over to a second slavemerchant, who sold them to a Turk at Cairo, of whom the European, at whose house I met the elder girl, had bought her. Thus we see, that a hard fate attends these poor blacks ever}'where, and that slavery, without the possibility of escape, is almost their certain lot.