THE SLAVE-TRADE EXTINCT. 505 



be carried on with less difficulty than hitherto. What has 

 become of Dr. Lenz ? I have heard nothing about him. Per- 

 haps it is because I have been temporarily obliged to abandon 

 the Monbuttu district. . . . 



I wrote you in a former letter that I had made up my 

 mind to hold on here, and explained to you fully in that letter 

 my reasons for so doing, and my hopes and plans for the future 

 of this land. I repeat what I then said ; I shall remain here, 

 and hold together as long as possible the remnants of the work 

 of the last ten years. If help comes to me from any side, so 

 much the better ; if not, at least I will fall on the field where 

 my work has been accomplished. I am sorry to be obliged 

 to contradict the opinion which Stanley and Schweinfurth 

 have expressed, u that now the slave-dealers are overrun- 

 ning this country, and that the Negroes have more to suffer 

 than they used to have." Since the retreat of Keremallah 

 and the destruction of himself and of all his people on 

 the borders of Kordofan, everything has remained in perfect 

 peace, and indeed the war has in some respects done good, 

 for the whole of the Bahr-el-Ghazal district has been totally 

 freed from the slave-dealers, who, according to the above 

 account, were said to be following unchecked their nefarious 

 traffic. In the whole of the Bahr-el-Ghazal, I repeat, there is 

 to-day no single Khartumer remaining. It is true that a few 

 of Lupton's old Negro soldiers are still there, but they are 

 living peaceably with the natives. In my province I have only 

 sixty-two Danagla left, and I am quite able to prevent them 

 committing any excesses. The reoccupation of these districts, 

 which have been temporarily given up, could be carried out 

 with the greatest ease, and if we could only get a few caravans 

 sent vid Mombasa, Masai, Masala,* Wakori,f and from thence 

 either here or to Kabroga, it would be all that we want. 

 Naturally, the old Egyptian system of plunder must never be 

 revived, but the natural resources of the land must be culti- 

 vated in a proper manner, and that too could easily be 



* Masala was the farthest point reached by Thomson at the north-east corner 

 of the Victoria Nyanza. 



t The Wakori are a tribe through which Bishop Hannington passed. They 

 inhabit a district on the northern shore of the Victoria Nyanza. — R. W. F. 



