402 Seven Years in the Sottdan.

prepared everytliing, intending to commence tlie work to-morroY, tlie 1st of January. I hope that with the beginning of the new year our terrible situation may be changed.

New Year's Eve ! a sad day for me ! I think of my home, my wife and children, who are ignorant of the miserable condition of their father. What tlioughts overwhehn me to-day, in the midst of so many putrefying corpses, and poisonous air filled with hungry vultures, who hover above the inexplicable mass of cane, papyrus, and bulrushes !

• ••••• So ended the year 1880, which led us to extremity, not because of our previous efforts and fatigues, but because I was so fortunate in my campaign against the slavers ; because the most influential men in Khartoum had condemned this war against Suleiman as a false step unfortunately taken by the Government ! As to me, it matters little to my personal interest whether Arab fanaticism labours to destroy Avhat has been obtained at the price of such immense sacrifice and bloodshed. I am perfectly satisfied with the letters written to me by Gordon Pasha to thank me for my work. He alone can appreciate the difiiculties that I had to overcome, and the scarcity of the means at my disposal. I am compensated by the gratitude of the people liberated, and by the fact that I have proved it to be possible to cut the Gordian knot of slavery and the slave trade. It is now seen that they can be suppressed, destroyed to the very roots, if only the Government and those who administer the Soudan provinces have energy enough to carry out faithfully the orders of the Viceroy.

Such a festering wound cannot indeed be healed