hion: he agrees to repay the
lender in ivory at one-half its market value. Having obtained the
required sum, he hires several vessels and engages from 100 to 300 men,
composed of Arabs and runaway villains from distant countries, who have
found an asylum from justice in the obscurity of Khartoum. He purchases
guns and large quantities of ammunition for his men, together with a few
hundred pounds of glass beads. The piratical expedition being complete,
he pays his men five months' wages in advance, at the rate of forty-five
piastres (nine shillings) per month, and he agrees to give them eighty
piastres per month for any period exceeding the five months for which
they are paid. His men receive their advance partly in cash and partly
in cotton stuffs for clothes at an exorbitant price. Every man has a
strip of paper, upon which is written, by the clerk of the expedition,
the amount he has received both in goods and money, and this paper he
must produce at the final settlement.

The vessels sail about December, and on arrival at the desired locality
the party disembark and proceed into the interior, until they arrive at
the village of some negro chief, with whom they establish an intimacy.

Charmed with his new friends, the power of whose weapons he
acknowledges, the negro chief does not neglect the opportunity of
seeking their alliance to attack a hostile neighbor. Marching throughout
the night, guided by their negro hosts, they bivouac within an hour's
march of the unsuspecting village doomed to an attack about half an
hour before break of day. The time arrives, and, quietly surrounding the
village while its occupants are still sleeping, they fire the grass
huts in all directions and pour volleys of musketry through the flaming
thatch. Panic-stricken, the unfortunate victims rush from their burning
dwellings, and the men are shot down like pheasants in a battue, while
the women and children, bewildered in the danger and confusion, are
kidnapped and secured. The herds of cattle, still within their kraal
or "zareeba," are easily disposed of, and are driven off with great
rejoicing, as the prize of victory. The women and children are then
fastened together, and the former secured in an instrument called a
sheba, made of a forked pole, the neck of the prisoner fitting into
the fork, and secured by a cross-piece lashed behind, while the wrists,
brought together in advance of the body, are tied to the pole. The
children are th