INTRODUCTION. xv 



appointed Governor, no rank had been given to him on account 

 of the intrigues of some Khartum officials. 



The state of his province in 1878, when he accepted the 

 post of Governor, is difficult to describe in a few words. The 

 population consisted of numerous and varied tribes, who. having 

 once experienced the beneficent rule of Gordon Pasha, had 

 suffered greatly from the oppression and cruelty of his suc- 

 cessors, and there was also a scattered population throughout 

 the country, consisting of former slave-dealers and many of 

 their late employes, who were settled in small fortified villages 

 over the land, and who had recommenced their nefarious prac- 

 tices. The officials, too, for the most part, were disreputable 

 men ; the greater number of them were criminals, who had 

 been banished from Egypt, and after undergoing their sentences, 

 had been taken on into Government employ. The Egyptian 

 soldiers were very unreliable, and their acts of oppression were 

 resented by the natives, and tended to bring about continual 

 friction between the Administration and the mass of the popu- 

 lation. Added to all this, many of the stations themselves 

 required rebuilding, and a block in the Nile prevented all sup- 

 plies being sent to the Equatorial Province for the first two 

 years of Emm's rule. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, 

 that the cares of government rested heavily upon him. Constant 

 journeys had to be made, daily complaints arrived from all sides 

 of difficulties between officials and native chiefs, and a continual 

 round of stated duties filled up his time from sunrise to sunset. 

 Many a man would have shrunk from undertaking the respon- 

 sibility of inducing order out of such chaos. Not so Emin 

 Effendi. Slowly but firmly, and with ever-increasing success, 

 he became master of the situation, and when I passed through 

 his province for the second time, in 1879, a most wonderful 

 change had taken place. Stations had been rebuilt, discontent 

 was changed into loyal obedience, corruption had been put 

 down, taxation was equalised, and he had already begun the 

 task of clearing his province from the slave-dealers who infested 



