Gordon at JVor/c.

prisoners are sold to other tribes in exchange for cows and goats.

Sucli warfare only began when tlie country was invaded by the ivory merchants. Their tactics were as follows. The traders, when they knew that such and such a village possessed much ivory, purchased the silence of the villages through which it was necessary to pass by promising them the cattle, retaining for themselves the ivory and the slaves. Having concluded the contract, the band of armed men set out by night, escorted by their native accomplices armed with lances. By this means they fell unexpectedly upon the village, and fired a volley into the huts ; the allies of the merchants took possession meanwhile of the cattle, and occupied the roads by which the poor wretches endeavoured to escape. Whoever could save himself abandoned the women and children. The prisoners were watched over by the mercenaries, and obliged to remain squatting on the ground, under pain of immediate death.

The village having been sacked, the unhappy people who had remained there were generally put to the torture that they might reveal the place where the ivory was concealed ; then the slaves, ivory, and cattle, having been collected in a pre-arranged spot, the village was set on fire. The assassins returned with cries of joy and warlike dances to their habitations, followed hy the prisoners they had made their slaves, carrying the ivory.

On arriving at the seriba, the spoils were divided, the ivory and slaves to the merchants, the cattle to the natives, who were then obliged to transport the ivory to the place of embarkation on the Nile. The ivory was stowed away in the ship's hold ; the slaves fettered so that they could not move, and in this way they had to remain for three weeks, the time necessary to arrive at Khartoum.

By a decree of Grordon to the heads of the scribe along the Bahr-el-Zeraf and the White Nile, it