164 
FIRST TIDINGS OF THE NILE. 
given, as one of them told us, is the muzzle of a gun. 
It seems marvellous, therefore, that the Zanzibar 
traders who pay as Jumah did, or buy tusks at the 
market price of weight for weight in Venetian beads, 
can bring their ivories into the same market as the 
Nile men, who actually pay nothing for the tusk. But 
this is the explanation : although they have been pur- 
chased by plundered cattle, the master of those plun- 
derers has to provide guns and ammunition ; he has 
to pay the men, and also the freight of the ivory, and 
its duty to the Egyptian Government. These are the 
expenses which bring the price of Nile ivory up to 
that which is taken to Zanzibar. But on either the 
one or the other side of the equator no honest man 
would have a chance against the present field of 
traders, who do everything in their power to keep the 
country as a preserve for cattle, slaves, and ivory. 
As our narrative has here touched on the Nile, I 
may as well mention what information we received 
regarding it from the many travellers coming to Kar- 
ague for the purposes of trade. On the 2d of January 
1862, while Speke and I were together, we were 
thrown into a state of excitement by being told that a 
man had arrived from a country far away to the north, 
bringing tidings that "a party having guns which 
knocked down trees had been attacked by the Wagani 
race, one hundred of them killed, the most of their 
property seized and made over to one Kamarasi, a 
king." The extraordinary part of the story was, that 
the strangers had not left the country, but still occu- 
pied their ships, which were reported to be large 
enough to contain cattle. Our firm impression was, 
that this could be no other than Petherick, who had 
