394 Seven Years in the Soudan.

two dollars, for tliirty-six dollars ; a pot of honey, wliicli costs one dollar in Balir-el-Gliazal, lie sells for ten dollars, and tobacco, costing at Khartoum twentyfive piastres, he sells at sixty, or three dollars. His cabin has become a real huvetfe militaire, and he an inn -keeper.

It is easy to imagine the effect of these spirituous liquors on the soldiers, especially a kind of absinthe, composed of noxious substances, and manufactured expressly for the Soudan. At night the soldiers are intoxicated, and the officers have now very little authority over them. Three soldiers and five infants have died. The soldiers had been ill for more than eight months, but everyone said they died of hunger.

The officers came to beg me to give them the twentyeight baskets of grain, and then the people would go to work eagerl} on the morrow. I gave them the grain, but it was very little for so many peoile, and I foresaw that the same thing would happen again in two days.

Thefts are beginning to be frequent at night. JSTow someone is caught in the act ; now another complains that his provisions have been stolen. Three days ago I begged Jinau Bey to send two of his men to see if they could find some sutep ; in the evening they returned carrying each a load. The next day more than a hundred men went ashore, but instead of seeking sutep they brought some cane, saying that the water was too deep, and that it was too difficult to go to the place wliere Jinau Bey's men had found the sutep. Yet there was still enough left to have sufficed for all the people for two or three days.

In the evening five soldiers and two women were missing at the roll-call. A report was immediately spread that I had exposed them to certain death by sending them away unarmed, and that they had fallen victims to the lances of the Xuer.

The boats at our bows cannot make much progress.