134 
TEAVELS m CENTEAL AFEICA. 
advance of ns, from their station adjoining my own at Wayo, had 
committed abominable outrages on the negroes during their march. 
At their urgent request to protect them, I brought with me to 
Gondokoro some Barri men, in order to reclaim for them some 
girls that these Arabs had captured. This circumstance, in addition 
to the previous steps I had taken to arrest this abominable and, to 
legitimate trade, most ruinous traffic, like the application of a 
match to a powder-magazine, produced a most bitter explosion 
against me on the part of Arab traders, their representatives, and 
several hundred of their interested servitors. This excitement is 
alluded to in Dr. Muriels letter, quoted in the body of the work, 
page 314, Vol. 1. ; but any description of mine can give only a faint 
idea of its intensity. 
My own men, some two hundred and fifty in number, either 
blood relations or otherwise closely allied to the traders, although 
on entering my service they had bound themselves to keep aloof 
from slave traffic, joined in the commotion, and the upshot was the 
breaking open of my stores, an indulgence in araki, spirits of wine, 
&c., and the stealing of ammunition. To such an extent were their 
reckless fusillades carried that a boy on board the Kathleen 
was shot, and, but for their arrant cowardice, they would have 
deliberately aecorded to me the same fate. 
Furnished as I was with the most elaborate materials for explo- 
ration ever eollected at this spot, owing to my exercise of the 
duties of British Consul in the prevention of the slave traffic, I 
now had the mortification to see them crumble away. Some hun- 
dred of the men, regardless of my orders to the contrary, decided 
to return forthwith to my trading station at Wayo; others, princi- 
pally hunters, would do nothing but proceed down the Nile, 
nominally to shoot elephants, but in reality to deprive me of their 
