4 26 AGRICULTURE, COMMERCE, ETC. 



be given up as a mudirie. But these are all dreams, and their 

 realisation will not become a necessity until later years, when 

 I have long been dead. Excuse this digression ; out of a full 

 heart the mouth speaketh. My position is not an enviable one, 

 as I have already hinted, for our province has received absolutely 

 no support at present. We certainly cannot blame officials 

 who have been left a whole year without supplies if they do 

 their duty reluctantly and ask for their discharge at every 

 opportunity. Since June 15, 1882, the day I left Khartum, 

 until to-day, March 6, 1883, I have received neither letters 

 nor news from there, nor has a steamer been sent up here. 

 Supposing that the river is blocked again, which I begin 

 to fear is the case — for I can think of no other explanation of 

 the dilatoriness at Khartum — would it not then be the duty 

 of the Government to send me news by the Bahr-el-Ghazal, 

 whither steamers have twice been sent ? Must I call their 

 conduct towards us negligence ? Is it not rather want of con- 

 sideration ? Hitherto my personal influence has kept things 

 in order, and made the Negroes my allies, but I begin to be 

 tired of it, for I see that the Government does not understand 

 us, and never will ; and if I retire, things will fall to pieces here 

 in a very short time, and then they will have a nice task before 

 them. 



You have heard of the Negro revolts on the Bahr-el-Ghazal ? 

 It seems that the Negroes there have had enough of being 

 regarded only as " things " from which every possible service 

 is to be extorted, and which are then to be maltreated in return 

 for the work they have done. After many years' experience of 

 the Negroes, and intimacy with them, I have really no hopes at 

 all of a regeneration of Negroes by Negroes — I know my own 

 men too well for that — nor have I yet been able to bring myself 

 to believe in the hazy sentimentalism which attempts the con- 

 version and blessing of the Negroes by translations of the New 

 Testament and by " moral pocket-handkerchiefs " alone ; but I 

 do not on that account despair of the accomplishment of our 

 task, viz., the opening up and consequent civilisation of the 

 African continent. It will no doubt be a work of time, and 

 whoever devotes himself to the task must from the first give up 

 all thoughts of fame and of his services being acknowledged. 



