54 
SALE OF THE MISSION-HOUSE. 
[chap. 1. 
Morlang acknowledged, with great feeling, that the 
mission was absolutely useless among such savages; 
that he had worked with much zeal for many years, 
but that the natives were utterly impracticable. They 
were far below the brutes, as the latter show signs of 
affection to those who are kind to them ; while the 
natives, on the contrary, are utterly obtuse to all 
feelings of gratitude. He described the people as 
lying and deceitful to a superlative degree; the more 
they receive the more they desire, but in return they 
will do nothing. 
Twenty or thirty of these disgusting, ash-smeared, 
stark naked brutes, armed with clubs of hard wood 
brought to a point, were lying idly about the station. 
The mission having given up the White Nile as 
a total failure, Herr Morlang sold the whole village 
and mission-station to Koorshid Aga this morning for 
3,000 piastres, <£30 ! I purchased a horse of the 
missionaries for 1,000 piastres, which I christened 
“ Priest,” as coming from the mission ; he is a good- 
looking animal, and has been used to the gun, as the 
unfortunate Baron Harnier rode him buffalo-hunting. 
This good sportsman was a Prussian nobleman, who, 
with two European attendants, had for some time 
amused himself by collecting objects of natural history 
and shooting in this neighbourhood. Both his Euro¬ 
peans succumbed to marsh fever. The end of Baron 
Harnier was exceedingly tragic. Having wounded a 
.buffalo, the animal charged a native attendant and 
threw him to the ground ; Baron Harnier was un¬ 
loaded, and with great courage he attacked the buffalo 
with the butt-end of his rifle to rescue the man then 
beneath the animal's horns. The buffalo left the man 
and turned upon his new assailant. The native, far 
from assisting his master, who had thus jeopardized 
his life to save him, fled from the spot. The unfor¬ 
tunate baron was found by the missionaries trampled 
and gored into an undis tinguishable mass; and the 
dead body of the buffalo was found at a short dis- 
