chap, i.] SLAVE TRADE OF THE WHITE NILE. 13 
A man without means forms an expedition, and 
borrows money for this purpose at 100 per cent, after 
this fashion. He agrees to repay the lender in ivory 
at one-half its market value. Having obtained the 
required sum, he hires several vessels and engages from 
100 to 300 men, composed of Arabs and runaway 
villains from distant countries, who have found an 
asylum from justice in the obscurity of Khartoum. 
He purchases guns and large quantities of ammunition 
for his men, together with a few hundred pounds of 
glass beads. The piratical expedition being complete, 
he pays his men five months wages in advance, at the 
rate of forty-five piastres (nine shillings) per month, 
and agrees to give them eighty piastres per month for 
any period exceeding the five months advanced. His 
men receive their advance partly in cash and partly in 
cotton stuffs for clothes at an exorbitant price. Every 
man has a strip of paper, upon which is written by the 
clerk of the expedition the amount he has received 
both in goods and money, and this paper he must 
produce at the final settlement. 
The vessels sail about December, and on arrival at 
the desired locality, the party disembark and proceed 
into the interior, until they arrive at the village of 
some negro chief, with whom they establish an inti¬ 
macy. Charmed with his new friends, the power of 
whose weapons he acknowledges, the negro chief does 
not neglect the opportunity of seeking their alliance 
to attack a hostile neighbour. Marching throughout 
the night, guided by their negro hosts, they bivouac 
within an hours march of the unsuspecting village 
doomed to an attack about half an hour before break 
of day. The time arrives, and quietly surrounding the 
village while its occupants are still sleeping, they fire 
the grass huts in all directions, and pour volleys of 
musketry through the flaming tluitch. Panic-stricken, 
the unfortunate victims rush from their burning dwell¬ 
ings, and the men are shot down like pheasants in a 
battue, while the women and children, bewildered in 
