16 DISTANT SLAVE MARKETS. [chap. i. 
hundred slaves for the traders own profit—worth on 
an average five to six pounds each. 
The boats are accordingly packed with a human 
cargo, and a portion of the trader s men accompany 
them to the Soudan, while the remainder of the party 
form a camp or settlement in the country they have 
adopted, and industriously plunder, massacre, and 
enslave, until their master s return with boats from 
Khartoum in the following season, by which time 
they are supposed to have a cargo of slaves and ivory 
ready for shipment. The business thus thoroughly 
established, the slaves are landed at various points 
within a few days' journey of Khartoum, at which 
places are agents, or purchasers, waiting to receive 
them with dollars prepared for cash payments. The 
purchasers and dealers are, for the most part, Arabs. 
The slaves are then marched across the country to 
different places; many to Senaar, where they are 
sold to other dealers, who sell them to the Arabs 
and to the Turks. Others are taken immense dis¬ 
tances to ports on the Red Sea, Soualdm, and Masowa, 
there to be shipped for Arabia and Persia. Many 
are sent to Cairo, and in fact they are disseminated 
throughout the slave-dealing East, the White Nile 
being the great nursery for the supply. 
The amiable trader returns from the White Nile 
to Khartoum ; hands over to his creditor sufficient 
ivory to liquidate the original loan of £1,000, and, 
already a man of capital, he commences as an inde¬ 
pendent trader. 
Such was the White Nile trade when I prepared 
to start from Khartoum on my expedition to the Nile 
sources. Every one in Khartoum, with the exception 
of a few Europeans, was in favour of the slave-trade, 
and looked with jealous eyes upon a stranger ven¬ 
turing within the precincts of their holy land; a land 
sacred to slavery and to every abomination and 
villany that man can commit. 
The Turkish officials pretended to discountenance 
