94 LAWLESSNESS AT GONDOKORO. [chap. n. 
be a colony of cut-throats. Nothing would be easier 
than to send a few officers and two hundred men from 
Khartoum to form a military government, and thus 
impede the slave-trade ; but a bribe from the traders 
to the authorities is sufficient to insure an uninter¬ 
rupted asylum for any amount of villainy. The camps 
were full of slaves, and the Bari natives assured me 
that there were large depots of slaves in the interior 
belonging to the traders that would be marched to 
Gondokoro for shipment to the Soudan a few hours 
after my departure. I was the great stumbling-block 
to the trade, and my presence at Gondokoro was con¬ 
sidered as an unwarrantable intrusion upon a locality 
sacred to slavery and iniquity. There were about six 
hundred of the traders’ people at Gondokoro, whose 
time was passed'in drinking, quarrelling, and ill-treating 
the slaves. The greater number were in a constant 
state of intoxication, and when in such a state, it was 
their invariable custom to fire off their guns in the 
first direction prompted by their drunken instincts; 
thus, from morning till night, guns were popping in 
all quarters, and the bullets humming through the air 
sometimes close to our ears, and on more than one 
occasion they struck up the dust at my feet. Nothing 
was more probable than a ball through the head by 
accident , which might have had the beneficial effect of 
