eglected all orders, and I plainly
perceived a settled discontent upon their general expression. The
donkeys and camels were allowed to stray, and were daily missing, and
recovered with difficulty. The luggage was overrun with white ants,
instead of being attended to every morning. The men absented themselves
without leave, and were constantly in the camps of the different
traders. I was fully prepared for some difficulty, but I trusted that
when once on the march I should be able to get them under discipline.

Among my people were two blacks: one, "Richarn," already described as
having been brought up by the Austrian Mission at Khartoum; the other, a
boy of twelve years old, "Saat." As these were the only really faithful
members of the expedition, it is my duty to describe them. Richarn was
an habitual drunkard, but he had his good points: he was honest, and
much attached to both master and mistress. He had been with me for some
months, and was a fair sportsman, and being of an entirely different
race from the Arabs, he kept himself apart from them, and fraternized
with the boy Saat.

Saat was a boy that would do no evil. He was honest to a superlative
degree, and a great exception to the natives of this wretched country.
He was a native of "Fertit," and was minding his father's goats, when a
child of about six years old, at the time of his capture by the Baggara
Arabs. He described vividly how men on camels suddenly appeared while he
was in the wilderness with his flock, and how he was forcibly seized and
thrust into a large gum sack and slung upon the back of a camel. Upon
screaming for help, the sack was opened, and an Arab threatened him with
a knife should he make the slightest noise. Thus quieted, he was carried
hundreds of miles through Kordofan to Dongola on the Nile, at which
place he was sold to slave-dealers and taken to Cairo to be sold to the
Egyptian government as a drummer-boy. Being too young he was rejected,
and while in the dealer's hands he heard from another slave, of the
Austrian Mission at Cairo, that would protect him could he only reach
their asylum. With extraordinary energy for a child of six years, he
escaped from his master and made his way to the Mission, where he was
well received, and to a certain extent disciplined and taught as much of
the Christian religion as he could understand. In company with a branch
establishment of the Mission, he was subsequently located at Khartoum,
and from