Savage Africa. 
31 
slave-hunting — Arab traders, assisted by white men, 
occasionally desolating the country, and inflicting untold 
horrors. At Khartoum, a kidnapping expedition would be 
openly fitted out and started for the country along the Nile 
bank. Were a war proceeding, this circumstance would be 
taken advantage of, and siding with the stronger party, the 
Arabs would assist in conquering the weaker, and then 
in capturing prisoners. Frequently, after securing a good 
number of slaves from the conquered tribe, the kidnappers 
turned round, and fought with their late allies, reducing as 
many of them as they could possibly catch, to the condition 
of slaves. Supposing that no quarrel, or intertribal war 
were going on, regular slave-catching raids were instituted 
by the lawless band, determined to succeed in their ne- 
farious schemes at all risks. Villages would be surrounded 
at dead of night, the inhabitants surprised, the huts fired, 
the old people and infants barbarously murdered, and ali 
the adult, and juvenile population above the age of infancy, 
marched off, in chains, to feed the slave-market. The con- 
sequence was, that in the Nile region, life and property were 
unsafe, agriculture and trade were paralysed, and the waste 
of human life was terrible, while so fearful were the cruelties 
inflicted upon the victims, that death itself seemed prefer- 
able. The Egyptian Government, however, has authorized 
Sir Samuel Baker, and others, to put down this slave-trading 
in the Nile districts ; and the evil is very greatly diminished, 
although not utterly abolished. In his interesting account 
of his expedition. Sir Samuel thus describes the desolation 
inflicted by the slave-trade. " It is impossible to describe 
the change that has taken place since I last visited this 
country. It was then a perfect garden, thickly populated, 
and producing all that man could desire. The villages 
were numerous, groves of plantains fringed the steep cliffs 
