expedition touched at, she loved to ride, followed by an
armed escort, dazzling the natives by her fair young beauty and
splendour of appearance, amazing them by her lavish liberality, and
receiving from them the homage due to a supposed daughter of the Sultan.
To this high rank they naturally elevated so magnificent and commanding
a personage. Their hearts, moreover, were won by her evident sympathy
with their down-trodden and suffering race. On one occasion she
encountered an Egyptian pasha, returning with a booty of slaves from a
recent razzia. She besought him to release the unhappy creatures, and
when he refused, purchased eight of them, immediately setting them at
liberty, and supplying them also with provisions. This has been
ridiculed as a quixotic act; but to our thinking it was an act of
generous womanly enthusiasm, which may be accepted as redeeming many of
the faults and failings of Miss Tinne's character, and compensating for
the frivolities which overclouded the real motive of her enterprise. To
every benevolent impulse her heart responded, like an AEolian harp to the
touch of the lightest breeze; and in the midst of her enjoyment of the
picturesque features of her enterprise, she ceased not to suffer
severely at the sight of the wretched condition of the poor negroes who
fell victims to the necessities of a nefarious traffic.

This traffic had excited such passions of revenge and hatred in the
breasts of the riverine tribes of the Nile, that the passage of the
river had become very dangerous, and the land journey almost
impossible. The natives looked upon every white man as a Turk and a
slave-dealer; and when a boat appeared on the horizon, terror-stricken
mothers cried to their children, "The Tourke, the Tourke are coming!"
The scarlet fez, or _tarbouch_, was regarded with peculiar aversion. "It
is the colour of blood just spilled," said a negro to his family. "It
never fades," they said; "the Turk renews it constantly in the blood of
the poor black man."

They learned to distinguish, however, between the slave-dealer's boats
and Alexina Tinne's steamer. Twice or thrice they boarded the latter; at
first very timidly, but afterwards with courage. "Is the young lady in
command," they said, "the Sultan's sister? Comes she to assist or to
persecute us?" When acquainted with the pacific object of her
expedition, they rapidly grew familiar, and ventured to go upon deck.
"Since you mean no evil against _us_,"