Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 125.djvu/96

82 representative. Against this trader Baker does not scruple to lay the charge of a determination to make the khedive's expedition a failure, even if it resulted in the extermination of the commander and his troops. It was in vain, therefore, that Baker cleared ground, and sowed seeds, and laid out gardens; he and his men were in danger of starving in the midst of plenty, for the Baris would neither bring corn nor cattle into the camp. It added much to his trouble that several of his subordinates, and a great many of his troops, were in their hearts averse from the service on which they were engaged; so that besides his outward enemies, Baker had to be ever on his guard against a secret foe. There can be no doubt of this fact, or of the hostility of Aboo Saood, and it is clear that Baker would never have surmounted the difficulties of his position had it not been for the heroism of his wife, the devotion of his nephew and the rest of the Europeans, and the bravery and fidelity of his picked corps of forty-six men, armed with Snider rifles and commanded by one of Baker's aides-de-camp, Lieut.-Colonel Abd-el-Kader, who had distinguished himself in Mexico in the army of Bazaine. Called at first the "Forty Thieves" from their light-fingered propensities, this bodyguard became, under the strict discipline which Baker enforced, as remarkable for honesty and morality as they were for courage, and with them and them alone their commander fought his way through thousands of savages, and ultimately returned victorious over all his foes. The campaign on which Baker now entered divides itself into two parts. The first, in which he routed the Baris in the districts round Gondokoro, and, in spite of the opposition of Aboo Saood, who worked like a mole underground, finally reduced them to submission. In the course of these operations he carried off the corn and cattle of the natives, deposed their hostile sheik Allorron and set up another in his stead, and sustained a series of attacks and surprises by night which were all foiled by his own energy and the bravery of his bodyguard. It was not till the month of December of 1871 that this first portion of his campaign came to an end. The authority of the khedive had been established in the basin of the White Nile north of Gondokoro; numbers of slaves had been detected, confiscated, and set free, in the seribas of the ivory-traders; and, in a word, Baker thought himself justified in believing that the extinction of the slave-trade in those regions was in a fair way of being accomplished. But besides these philanthropic results, the firman contained clauses for the extension of the khedive's dominions to the south; and perhaps, if it had been put plainly to that potentate and his divan, it would have been found that this was their main object in organizing the expedition, and that the extinction of the traffic which Baker had so much at heart was not so very dear to them after all. At any rate, there the acquisition of territory stood in Baker's bond, and, with his adventurous nature, he set himself to the task as soon as his work round Gondokoro was done.

By this time the expedition had been upwards of twelve months without communication with Khartoum, and, indeed, Baker's most constant cause of complaint against the Egyptian government was that they neither answered his letters nor sent him supplies. The soldiers were in rags and without pay, and on December 14th would come the great Mohammedan holiday, called the Ume-el-ete, when every one was expected to be smart. On the 13th, with a happy generosity, Baker, out of his own magazines, was able to serve out new clothing to the officers and 212 men, whom he intended to carry with him to the south of Gondokoro into the country of that Kamrasi whom he had known on his previous expeditions. At the same time the wives of the men were attired in gaudy clothing, and thus the festival passed off with general good-humour. All his preparations for his onward march having been completed. Baker, on January 22, 1872, started with 212 men up the White Nile to annex Central Africa to Egypt, leaving behind him at Gondokoro 340 men, together with his English engineers, who were to put together the steamers which had been brought thus far in pieces during his absence. Thus his force of sixteen hundred men had been reduced to 552 all told. On January 27th, the expedition arrived at the cataracts of the White Nile in north latitude 4° 38s., where they left their vessels, and were met by one Bedden, a Bari chief and old friend of Baker's, who it was hoped would provide them with bearers for the sixty miles between that point and Lobord. Much to the surprise of Baker this old friend, when asked for at least two thousand bearers, ungratefully refused to supply them. Neither he nor his people had ever worked as bearers "for the Turks," 