chap, hi.] FIRST INTRODUCTION TO SAAT. 81 
child of six years old, he escaped from his master, and 
made his way to the Mission, where he was well 
received, and to a certain extent disciplined and taught 
us much of the Christian religion as he could under¬ 
stand. In company with a branch establishment of 
the Mission, he was subsequently located at Khartoum, 
and from thence was sent up the White Nile to a 
Mission-station in the Shillook country. The climate 
of the White Nile destroyed thirteen missionaries in 
the short space of six months, and the boy Saat returned 
with the remnant of the party to Khartoum, and was 
re-admitted into the Mission. The establishment was 
at that time swarming with little black boys from the 
various White Nile tribes, who repaid the kindness of 
the missionaries by stealing everything they could lay 
their hands upon. At length the utter worthlessness 
of the boys, their moral obtuseness, and the apparent 
impossibility of improving them, determined the chief 
of the Mission to purge his establishment from such 
imps, and they were accordingly turned out. Poor 
little Saat, the one grain of gold amidst the mire, 
shared the same fate. 
It was about a week before our departure from 
Khartoum that Mrs. Baker and I were at tea in the 
middle of the court-yard, when a miserable boy about 
twelve years old came uninvited to her side, and 
knelt down in the dust at her feet. There was 
something so irresistibly supplicating in the attitude 
of the child, that the first impulse was to give him 
something from the table. This was declined, and 
he merely begged to be allowed to live with us, 
and to be our boy. He said that he had been 
turned out of the Mission, merely because the Bari 
boys of the establishment were thieves, and thus he 
suffered for their sins. I could not believe it possible 
that the child had been actually turned out into the 
streets, and believing that the fault must lay in the 
boy, I told him I would inquire. In the meantime he 
was given in charge of the cook. 
G 
