is that accursed slave-trade, that the so-called ivory
trade of the White Nile requires an explanation.
Throughout the Soudan money is exceedingly scarce
and the rate of interest exorbitant, varying, according
to the securities, from thirty-six to eighty per cent.;
this fact proves general poverty and dishonesty, and
acts as a preventive to all improvement. So high and
fatal a rate deters all honest enterprise, and the country
must lie in ruin under such a system. The wild
speculator borrows upon such terms, to rise suddenly
like a rocket, or to fall like its exhausted stick
Thus, honest enterprise being impossible, dishonesty
takes the lead, and a successful expedition to the
White Nile is supposed to overcome all charges. There
are two classes of White Nile traders, the one possessing!
capital, the other being penniless adventurers; the
same system of operations is pursued by both, but that
of the former will be evident from the description of
the latter.
A man without means forms an expedition, and
borrows money for this purpose at 100 per cent, after
this fashion. He agrees to repay the lender in ivory
jit 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
raté of forty-five piastres (nine shillings) per month,
and agrees to give them eighty piastres per month foi
any period exceeding the five months advanced. 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 neighbour. 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
C 2