and affords a slightly nearer approach to the
White Nile, coming out immediately opposite the fortified camp of
Omdurman, which the Mahdi made his headquarters and capital after the
famous siege of 1884. There was nothing attractive or imposing about
Khartoum. It contained 3000 mud houses, and one more pretentious
building in the Governor's official residence or palace, known as the
Hukumdariaha. It is surrounded by a wall and ditch, except where the
Blue Nile supplies the need; and its western wall is not more than
half a mile from the banks of the White Nile, so that with proper
artillery it commands both rivers. The Nilometer at this place used to
give the first and early intimation to the cultivators in Lower Egypt
of the quantity of water being brought down from the rivers of
Abyssinia. There seems no other conclusion possible than that sooner
or later this practical service will compel Egypt, whenever she feels
strong enough, to re-establish her power at Khartoum; already there is
evidence that the time has arrived.

Having conquered the Soudan easily, the rulers of Egypt experienced no
difficulty in retaining it for sixty years; and if other forces,
partly created by the moral pressure of England and civilized opinion
generally, had not come into action, there is every reason to suppose
that their authority would never have been assailed. Nor did the
Egyptians stand still. By the year 1853 they had conquered Darfur on
the one side, and pushed their outposts on the other 120 miles south
of Khartoum. In the rear of the Egyptian garrison came the European
trader, who took into his service bands of Arab mercenaries, so that
he pushed his way beyond the Egyptian stations into the region of the
Bahr Gazelle, where the writ of the Cairo ruler did not run. These
traders came to deal in ivory, but they soon found that, profitable as
it was, there was a greater profit in, and a far greater supply of,
"black ivory." Thus an iniquitous trade in human beings sprang up, and
the real originators of it were not black men and Mahommedans, but
white men, and in many instances Englishmen. From slave buying they
took to slave hunting, and in this way there is no exaggeration in
declaring that villages and districts were depopulated. Such
scandalous proceedings could not be carried on in the dark, and at
last the Europeans involved felt compelled, by the weight of adverse
opinion, or more probably from a sense of their own peril, to