Zibei' s Conspiracy.

301 Towards three p.m. another carrier brought me two letters from His Excellencj Gordon Pasha, one of which contained an order to meet him at Darra ; in the other he enjoined me to proceed to Tuesha.

Although I was not completely rested after the fatigues of the journey, I gave the necessary orders for departure the same day for Darra, which-was three and a half days' journey from the place where I now was.

Many believed and some still believe, that it was an impossible undertaking to abolish slavery in the Dark Continent, as Stanley calls it. Many thought that even if it succeeded it would be at the cost of thousands of human lives, and that therefore it would be better to bear existing evils philosophically than to create others.

The late events on the Bahr-el-Ghazal which destro3"ed the slave trade, did, indeed, cost torrents of blood ; but why ?

Because the Government, when, seven years ago, they learned that Ziber had massacred the Egyptian garrisons left in these provinces by the Government of Khartoum, instead of sending an army against him to punish him, nominated him Bey and Governor of Bahr-el-Ghazal. Ziber had succeeded in corrupting the authorities at Khartoum, who represented him to the central Government at Cairo as a olossus whom it was impossible to conquer, and advised that he should be handled " with a pair of gloves," as the saying goes, while instead, he ought to have been made to feel the weight of a firm and iron hand. Suleiman Ziber, gaining courage from this impunity, revolted again in 1878 in the manner I have already described ; but things had changed both at Cairo and at Khartoum, and Gordon Pasha was not the man to leave acts of revolt and the massacre of his soldiers unpunished. He immediately charged me to march to the rebellious provinces of Bahr-el-Ghazal, while he in person marched to