Great Mortality through Famine. 387 six uegroes, the number would reach a hundred thousand. But calculating also the thirty seribe, the Jelabba establishments, and the trade driven by the governors, the number of eighty thousand may be doubled. I have never found an Arab in a settlement who did not possess from thirty up to two hnndred slaves. From Yussuf Pasha, who made expeditions of eight hundred slaves at a time, I took lately more than five hundred slaves ; from the Jelabba Woad Alera three hundred, and so on in the case of a number of merchants who possessed from forty to a hundred. Here is the true source. The most miserable Arab possessed some twenty huts in an enclosure made of matting surrounded by thorn bushes ; in this enclosure the slaves were crowded, tied to each other by long chains and guarded by Besingers. I destroyed all these enclosures, so that it might be seen Avhat everyone did in his oAvn house. Xo one at Kliartoum Avould have dared to attempt to destroy tlieir traffic. The principal proprietors of these seribe were established at Khartoum, where they succeeded in bribing the officials, and ended by finding, in the latter, protectors who enabled them to carry on their inhuman trade without hindrance.

When Gordon Pasha was first nominated Governor-General of Equatorial Africa, the frontiers of that country commenced at the Sobat, so that Bahr-el-Gliazal formed part of the country under his administration. When I first arrived at Khartoum I was ordered to occupy that province. On the same steamer in which I now am, the Sofia, I arrived at Meshra-el-Rek, in which post I found six nuggers, waiting for their load of ivory and slaves ; in fact, about eight days after my arrival, there appeared a quantity of porters laden with ivory and conducting six to seven thousand bullocks, and about six hundred slaves, whom they had captured on the journey. I could not learn what happened after, because a steamer, sent expressly, brought me orders to go back c c 2