470 LETTEES TO DE. SCHWEINFUETH. 



the Tonj — there may, then, be a zeriha standing beside this 

 stream, and named after it. Communication between Sabi 

 and Jnr Ghattas, and between the latter and Dem Soliman, is 

 said to be interrupted entirely. So my mission to Keremallah 

 is now reposing in Sabi, and long may their rest continue ! 



August 31, 1884. 



Events have progressed a little. I had had no news from 

 our station of Bor since the departure of the steamer in April 

 1883, and I was in constant dread lest it should have shared 

 the fate of Shambe, which was overpowered by the Negroes 

 and destroyed. Some attempts to get letters forwarded there 

 through Bufi by the Elyab people failed. At last I had re- 

 course to Befo, the Bari chief of the Belinian mountains near 

 Gondokoro, and offered him a large reward if he would send a 

 letter to B5r. He agreed to do so, and I handed him my 

 despatch on July 26. To learn the fate of the Bor people 

 was not my only object. "When Shambe was in great straits, 

 I had sent off the largest and best of my barges there with 

 corn, ammunition, men, and one officer, and I had heard no 

 more of it since. Imagine, then, my delight when, on the 

 evening of August 24, a sergeant and eleven soldiers arrived 

 here from Bor, bringing the postal arrears and the best of 

 news. Not only was all going on excellently in Bor, but 

 the barge is there undamaged, and some men have escaped 

 from Shambe. The soldiers, led by Befo's man, had marched 

 from Bor to Gondokoro in six days along the eastern bank 

 of the river, and had everywhere been well received by the 

 Negroes. But the most surprising information came from the 

 commander of the Bor station, who writes as follows in a 

 postscript to his latest official despatch : — " I hear from some 

 Tuj men, who are now here (in Bor), that the river is blocked, 

 and that several steamers have come from the north, but have 

 gone back again to Fashoda." I have immediately made this 

 news known to all my people by a circular ; whether true or 

 not, it will inspire them with fresh courage. When I was in 

 Khartum, I begged Abd-el-Kader Pasha, a very well-disposed 

 man, to grant me a steamer for Lado, and to assign the station 



