140 The British Campaign in the Soudan.

the race-hatred of the Soudanese for the Egyptians, but with the great mass of the people it was a passive senti--ment which would remain dormant unless aroused by exciting causes.

A much more active and dangerous element of discontent was found in the large and powerful class engaged in the slave-trade, that curse of Africa probably as old as the negro race with which it seems to be an innate instinct ; for as Sir Samuel Baker remarks, the first impulse of a freed negro, as soon as he has a chance, is to acquire a slave of his own. That this trade existed in the days of the Pharaohs is placed beyond doubt by the images of chain-gangs of negro slaves carved upon their monuments.

The strength and magnitude of the slave-hunting and slave-trading organizations cannot be appreciated without a description of their system of operations.

An enterprising adventurer starts with a capital of £1,000 which, if he has it not, he can always borrow in Khartoum at 100 per cent. interest. He enlists 150 men from the thousands of slave-hunting soldiers and desperadoes who swarm in Khartoum and Dongola, eager for such employment. He supplies them with fire-arms and abundant ammunition; he buys a few hundred pounds of glass beads and a few hundred yards of coarse cotton fabrics for presents and barter. He charters six or eight Nile-boats and leaves Khartoum about the 1st of December. Sailing some five hundred miles or more up the White Nile, he lands at some eligible point and penetrates into the interior. First he begins to trade for elephants’ tusks, but this is only a preliminary to more serious business. He invariably finds some negro chief at enmity with another and anxious to secure an ally so