EGYPT AND THE SOUDAN 93 



Of the many travellers whom I have known I 

 should place Mansfield Parkyns (1 823-1 894) as 

 perhaps the most gifted with natural advantages for 

 that career. He easily held his own under difficulties, 

 won hearts by his sympathy, and could touch any 

 amount of pitch without being himself defiled. He 

 was consequently an admirable guide in that then 

 sink of iniquity, Khartum. The saying was that 

 when a man was such a reprobate that he could not 

 live in Europe, he went to Constantinople ; if too 

 bad to be tolerated in Constantinople, he went to 

 Cairo, and thenceforward under similar compulsion 

 to Khartum. Half a dozen or so of these trebly 

 refined villains resided there as slave-dealers ; they 

 were pallid, haggard, fever-stricken, profane, and 

 obscene. Mansfield Parkyns complacently tolerated 

 and mastered them all. The abominations of their 

 habitual conversation exceeded in a far-away degree 

 any other I have ever listened to, but it was clever. 

 When one of them was out of the room, the others 

 freely related his adventures to us, in which some 

 anecdote like this was frequent. " So he said, ' Let 

 us be friends ; come drink a cup of coffee and smoke 

 a pipe,' then he put poison into the coffee." There 

 is a gourd whose dried seeds are said to be poisonous 

 and not very unlike coffee in taste, which is particularly 

 convenient in such cases. With all their villainy there 

 was something of interest in their talk, but I had 

 soon quite enough of it. Still, the experience was 

 acceptable, for one wants to know the very worst of 

 everything as well as the very best. 



Some few years later, when trade had thriven 

 and Khartum had become less barbarous, it was 



