sold at Constantinople; he formerly belonged to
Mehemet Ali Pasha; he had been to London and
Paris, and during the Crimean war he was at Kertch.
Altogether he was a great traveller, and he had a
natural taste for geography and botany, that marked
him as a wonderful exception to the average of the
party. He had run away from his master in Egypt, I
and had been vagabondizing about in Ehartoum in
handsome clothes,'negro-like, persuading himself that
the public admired him, and thought that he was a
Bey. Having soon run through his money, he had
engaged himself to Koorshid Aga to serve in his
White Nile expedition. He was an excellent example
nf the natural instincts of the negro remaining intact
under all circumstances. Although remarkably
superior to his associates, his small stock of knowledge
was combined with such an exaggerated conceit, that
he was to me a perpetual source of amusement, while
he was positively hated by his ^comrades, both by
Arabs and blacks, for his overbearing behaviour.
Having seen, many .countries, he was excessively fond
of recounting his adventures, all .of which had so
strong a colouring of the “ Arabian Nights,” that he
might' have been the original “ Sinbad the Sailor.”
His natural talent for geography was really extraordinary
; he would frequently pay me a visit,' and
spend hours in drawing maps with a stick upon the
sand, of the countries he had visited, and especially of
the Mediterranean, and the course from Egypt and
Constantinople to England. Unfortunately, some long
story was attached to every principal point of the
voyage. The descriptions most interesting to me were
those connected with the west bank of the White
Nile, as he had served for some years with the
trading party, and had penetrated through the Mak-
karika, a cannibal tribe, to about two hundred miles
west of G-ondokoro. Both he and many of Ibrahim’s
party had been frequent witnesses to acts of cannibalism,
during their residence among the Makkarikas.
They described these cannibals as remarkably good
people, but possessing a peculiar taste for dogs and
human flesh. They accompanied the trading party in
their razzias, and invariably ate the bodies of the
slain. The traders complained that they were bad
associates, as they insisted upon killing and eating
.the children which the party wished to secure as
slaves : their custom was to catch a child by its ankles,
and to dash its head against the ground; thus killed,
they opened the abdomen, extracted the stomach
and intestines, and tying the two ankles to the neck,
they carried the body by slinging it over the shoulder,
and thus returned to camp, where they divided it by