en fastened by their necks with a rope attached to the
women, and thus form a living chain, in which order they are marched to
the head-quarters in company with the captured herds.

This is the commencement of business. Should there be ivory in any
of the huts not destroyed by the fire, it is appropriated. A general
plunder takes place. The trader's party dig up the floors of the huts
to search for iron hoes, which are generally thus concealed, as the
greatest treasure of the negroes; the granaries are overturned and
wantonly destroyed, and the hands are cut off the bodies of the slain,
the more easily to detach the copper or iron bracelets that are usually
worn. With this booty the TRADERS return to their negro ally. They have
thrashed and discomfited his enemy, which delights him; they present him
with thirty or forty head of cattle, which intoxicates him with joy, and
a present of a pretty little captive girl of about fourteen completes
his happiness.

An attack or razzia, such as described, generally leads to a quarrel
with the negro ally, who in his turn is murdered and plundered by the
trader--his women and children naturally becoming slaves.

A good season for a party of a hundred and fifty men should produce
about two hundred cantars (20,000 lbs.) of ivory, valued at Khartoum at
4,000 pounds. The men being paid in slaves, the wages should be NIL,
and there should be a surplus of four or five hundred slaves for the
trader's own profit--worth on an average five to six pounds each.

The amiable trader returns from the White Nile to Khartoum; hands over
to his creditor sufficient ivory to liquidate the original loan of 1,000
pounds, and, already a man of capital, he commences as an independent
trader.

Such was the White Nile trade when I prepared to start from Khartoum
on my expedition to the Nile sources. Every one in Khartoum, with the
exception of a few Europeans, was in favor of the slave-trade, and
looked with jealous eyes upon a stranger venturing within the precincts
of their holy land--a land sacred to slavery and to every abomination
and villainy that man can commit.

The Turkish officials pretended to discountenance slavery; at the
same time every house in Khartoum was full of slaves, and the Egyptian
officers had been in the habit of receiving a portion of their pay in
slaves, precisely as the men employed on the White Nile were paid by
their employers. The Egyptian authorities looked upon the expl