,76 SIR SAMUEL BAKER AND THE SLAVE TRADE 



visited upon this country of slavery and abomination, spread like a 

 fire throughout the town, and consumed the regiments that had re- 

 ceived this horrible legacy from the dying cargo of slaves." 



Such a horrible state of affairs could not be permitted to con- 

 tinue, and in 1869 the Egyptian government engaged the famous trav- 

 eler Sir Samuel White Baker, who had discovered the Albert Nyanza 

 five years before, to head an expedition for its suppression. Mr. Baker 

 was placed at the head of one thousand four hundred infantry, two 

 hundred cavalry, and two batteries of artillery, with orders to pro- 

 ceed at once into the district of Gondokoro, which lay one thousand 

 four hundred and fifty miles distant. On this perilous journey he was 

 accompanied by his wife. He writes: "Had I been alone it would 

 have been no hard lot to die upon the path before me, but there was 

 one who, although my greatest comfort, was also my greatest care. 

 I shuddered at the prospect for her, should she be left alone in savage 

 lands at my death; and gladly w^ould I have left her in the luxuries 

 of home instead of exposing her to the miseries of Africa. It was in 

 vain that I implored her to remain, and that I painted the difficulties 

 and perils still blacker than I supposed they really would be: she was 

 resolved, with w^oman's constancy and devotion, to share all dangers 

 and to follow me through each rough footstep of the wild life before 

 me. And Ruth said, 'Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from 

 following after thee : for whither thou gocst I will go, and where thou 

 lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my 

 God: where thou diest w^ill I die, and there will T l)e buried: the Lord 

 do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.' " 



Mr. Baker selected his bodyguard from two regiments accom- 

 panying the expedition, and part of them were black and part white. 

 • These he armed with Snider rifles and jocosely named "the forty 

 thieves." Passing Khartoum and proceeding to the point w^here the 

 "Blue Nile" unites wnth the "White Nile," they advanced rapidly up 

 the latter, under a fresh breeze which blew from the north. Continu- 

 ing up the stream until he reached a point where it is joined' by the 

 Sobat, he entered the Bahr Giraffe, the main river being impassable 

 on account of the masses of vegetation w^hich float itpon its surface, 

 and the large number of floating islands which it contains. This 



