The Ru/ies of Bahr-el-Ghazal. 343 ledge the receipt of your welcome letters which gave me much pleasure. I am sorry that Lieutenant Marocco ' cannot come ; patience ! T have sent several letters from Dem Suleiman and the account of the end of the war in Darfour ; you will receive them by the steamer via Khartoum. I shall also, later on, send an account of another expedition I made against the slave traders who returned to the Sandeh after Suleiman's defeat. They were about six hundred, and I captured them all, so that the country is everywhere rid of them. I am too busy to send you the account by this steamer, but you will have sufficient material at present for the Es2jlorafor(\ Many thanks for the maps, they will be of use. Thanks also for the provisions. 1 have sent you a packet that Emin Bey entrusted to me, and sent me rid Shakka.

"Apropos of the Tme.s article'' T can assure you that at the beginning of the campaign I only possessed one thousand four hundred fighting men, of whom only four hundred were regular troops. Adding the contingent from the Sandeh I could count on two thousand four hundred ; towards the time when I took the offensive, I liad in all three thousand two hundred fighting men with which to face thirty thousand.

" At the beginning of the campaign Suleiman had fifteen thousand men, of whom four hundred were armed with carabines for elephant-hunting, and one thousand seven hundred with Remington rifles. The rest of the troop was armed with simple carabines or double-barrelled guns of Belgian manufacture.

" Besides these fifteen thousand soldiers Suleiman had a reserve of other eight thousand, mostly from " Lieutenant Marocco, Italian naval officer, had offered to make a journey to central Africa, Avliich plan, for private reasons, could not be realized. — En.

Copied in the Hx/jlorafore, year III., Supplement ISTo. 2.