428 Seven Years in the Soudan.

besides tlie native vegetables, such as hamie and melohliia, melons and ])nm|)kins, Euroi)ean vegetables, such as cauliflowers, cabbages, carrots, beans, some species of radishes, onions, garlic, peas, cucumbers, and beetroot in abundance. I also introduced American maize, Avhich is cultivated along all the banks of the rivers.

" I have recruited as volunteers more than seven hundred Besingers, abandoning the former system of the Government, which Avas to pay seven francs a head for recruits, a system which encouraged the slave trade.

" One of my first cares was to reduce the expenses, and by sending away the Jelabba I have succeeded in reducing them to a tenth of what they were under Idris Bey's administration.

"Under tlio adiiniiistiation of Yussnf Hey the expenses of Rolil-Monbuttu were monthly -tHjOOO/., or per annum £540,000 " Tliosc of Bahr-el-Gliazal, which territory was occupied for a third by the Government and two-thirds by Ziber Pasha 1,. 300, 000 £'1,S46,000 " Under my administration the expenses of Tiolil-Monbuttu were monthly about 19,500/., those of Bahr-el-Ghazal and Niam-Niam, including the annexed countries occupied by Ziber Pasha, were 5i,*224/. a month or per annum ...... 884, G88 " Total sum per annum difierence . . . 8961, 312 " These are not imaginary' sums, as the Egyptian Government well knows.

" The above expenses can be still further reduced, as large garrisons are no longer necessar}'. Bahrel-Ghazal, under the former administration, had twenty-seven thousand gims at its disposal, distributed among the various irregular troops, the merchants, and the Jelabba. The armed force was reduced by me to only three hundred men of regular troops. Moslem predecessors made the Govern-