180 WILD BEASTS AND THEIR WAYS CHAP. 



been injured, although the sculp would have been badly lacerated, 

 and death would have been occasioned by the grip of the jaws 

 upon the neck, not by the blow. 



Another instance of the great force of a lion's blow was wit- 

 nessed by my late friend, Monsieur Lafurgue, whom I knew when 

 he was a resident of Berber in the Soudan. This French gentle- 

 man was agent to Halim Pasha, the uncle of His Highness Ismail 

 the Ex-Khedive. Halim Pasha was a man of great energy, and 

 he was the first personage in the history of Egypt who sent a 

 steamer from Cairo to ascend the cataracts of the Nile and reach 

 Khartoum. This was accomplished after extreme difficulty in 

 experimenting upon the course of nearly 1600 miles of river, the 

 navigation of which was then unknown to others beyond the native 

 owners of small vessels. Halim Pasha was the first to attempt 

 the commercial development of the White Nile, and Monsieur 

 Lafargue was an admirable representative of his august employer. 

 The steamer arrived safely at Khartoum, and was engaged in the 

 trade of the Blue Nile to Fazocle', and through the White Nile to 

 the unknown, as in those days Khartoum was the southern bound- 

 ary of Egypt. 



Monsieur Lafargue was a charming man, highly educated, with 

 a mind of a peculiar character, that enabled him to lead a happy 

 life in the remote wilderness of the Soudan. It was difficult to 

 understand, when conversing with him in his beautiful house at 

 Berber, or sitting together in his garden on the extreme margin of 

 the Nile, while the desert sands upon the east side of the wall 

 showed the limit of civilisation and fertility, how any man of cul- 

 ture could endure r to pass his entire existence in such a narrow 

 boundary the Nile, the fruitful source, upon one side, and the 

 desert 200 yards beyond; sterile, only because the water could 

 not reach its surface. 



He had his books, all the monthly periodicals from Europe, 

 and his newspapers ; he also had his private affairs, his agency, 

 which occupied his time ; in addition, he had a wife, an Abyssinian 

 lady of great beauty, and of gentle sympathetic disposition. To 

 her husband she was as the moon is to the traveller upon an 

 otherwise dark night. Her story was too romantic and sad to be 

 lightly introduced, but her husband had given up his country, and 

 his family in France, after having made his fortune in the Soudan, 

 entirely upon her account. He described her to me as the "gazelle 

 of the desert, that was contented and happy in its native sands, 

 but would die in the atmosphere of conventional civilisation." 



Monsieur Lafargue held a deservedly high position among all 



