Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 125.djvu/87

Rh Tondy, two of those Western Nile affluents which we have mentioned, Dr. Schweinfurth remained for some months. It was what may be called the mother settlement of nine smaller depots, and situated on the borders of three great tribes, the Dinka, the Dyoor, and the Bongos, it was admirably suited for the traffic both in slaves and ivory, and an excellent centre for Schweinfurth's scientific researches. The resident armed force, consisting almost entirely of natives of Dongola, was not much below two hundred and fifty men, and under their protection a number of Nubian and other slave-dealers had taken up their abode; it was a spot exactly suited for them too, for here it was that they completed their purchases of slaves in-order to carry them on to Darfoor and Kordofan. Whatever might be said at Cairo, or even be denied by the authorities at Khartoum, here in Ghattas' chief seriba, it was useless to shut one's eyes to the fact that slaves were, even before ivory, the great staple of the district. At least half of the one thousand souls which the caravan found within the strong palisades of the seriba were slaves, either reserved for future traffic or divided among the soldiers as part of their pay; added to which all the hard household and domestic work was done by male and female slaves. Before we quit this part of our subject we may say that Ghattas' rule in the northern Bongo country extends over two hundred square miles, of which about forty-five in the immediate neighbourhood of the camps are under cultivation, the population of the whole being about twelve thousand men. This domain, which, as Schweinfurth remarks, would be worth millions of pounds in Europe, might be purchased at any time from its owner for about twenty thousand dollars, which he mentions as a proof of how little actual profit is made by expeditions fitted out at so much cost. Landed in a district so promising for his pursuits, Schweinfurth did not fret himself at the condition of the inhabitants. Here in Europe, and throughout his book, he, of course, is quite against the slave-trade, and ready to point out its baneful influence; but there in the Western Nile region, he came as a botanist, and instead of protesting against a necessary condition of existence, calmly followed up his favourite study. In fact, just where he then was, a man who declared that he would have nothing to do with slaves or slave-dealers would be considered as silly as a man who insisted in London on breathing air without carbon in it. In unfailing good health our traveller occupied himself with excursions and in arranging the collections thus made. Thus, during several months, he traversed the districts between the Djoor and Tondy, and has much to tell us of the loveliness of the country as he saw it first after the early rains. In the course of these excursions he became well acquainted with the Dinkas, the Dyoors, and the Bongos, all races which, compared with the cannibal tribes beyond them, may be considered half-civilized; all are subtle workers in iron, having fixed abodes and great herds; all however are destined, in our author's opinion, to extermination before the slave-trade, which seeks in them its chief victims, as well as before the dangerous protection of Egypt.

At the beginning of September 1869, the naturalist was enabled to despatch to the Meshera the treasures which he had collected, and which now adorn the Museum at Berlin. Thus forty packages were sewn up in hides and smeared with a kind of caoutchouc which covered them with a varnish impenetrable either to rats or insects; so that having been twelve months on the way they reached Europe in perfect safety. Having exhausted that botanical region, Schweinfurth pined for further discoveries, and having sucked Ghattas' country dry, prepared to advance farther into the interior towards the south. In this plan he found an unexpected and a most welcome ally in that chivalrous Nubian Mohammed Aboo Sammat, whose boat had joined them on the White Nile, who had since kept up his intimacy with the traveller while he was under the guardianship of Ghattas, sending him not only skins and plants, but flocks of sheep, and whose generosity now reached its climax in a most magnificent offer to convey the traveller, free of all charge, into the inmost recesses of Central Africa. A native of Dar Kenoos, in his way he was a little hero. Sword in hand he had vanquished various districts large enough to have formed small states in Europe. A merchant full of enterprise, he avoided no danger and was sparing neither of trouble nor of sacrifice. "Yet all the while," adds Schweinfurth, "he had the keenest sympathy with learning, and would travel through the remotest countries at the bidding of science to see the wonders of the world." In the matter of slaves, however, we have no doubt that 