SIR SAMUEL BABER AND THE SLAVE TRADE 
375 
intimacy. Charmed with his new friends, the power of whose weap¬ 
ons he acknowledges, the negro chief does not neglect the opportunity 
of seeking their alliance to attack a hostile neighbor. Marching 
throughout the night, guided by their negro hosts, they bivouac within 
an hour’s march of the unsuspecting village doomed to an attack about 
half an hour before break of day. The time arrives, and, quietly sur¬ 
rounding the village while its occupants are still sleeping, they fire 
the grass huts in all directions, and pour volleys of musketry through 
the flaming thatch. Panic-stricken, the unfortunate victims rush from 
their burning dwellings, and the men are shot down like pheasants 
in a battue, while the women and children, bewildered in the danger 
and confusion, are kidnapped and secured. The herds of cattle, still 
within their kraal or ‘zareeba/ are easily disposed of, and are driven 
off with great rejoicing, as the prize of victory. The women and 
children are then fastened together, the former secured in an instru¬ 
ment called a sheba, made of a forked pole, the neck of the prisoner 
fitting into the fork, secured by a cross-piece lashed behind; while the 
wrists, brought together in advance of the body, are tied to the pole. 
The children are then fastened by their necks with a rope attached to 
the women, and thus form a living chain, in which order they are 
marched to the headquarters in company with the captured herds. 
“The Egyptian government had been pressed by some of the 
European powers to take measures for the suppression of the slave- 
trade : a steamer had accordingly been ordered to capture all vessels 
laden with this infamous cargo. Two vessels had been seized and 
brought to Khartoum, containing eight hundred and fifty human be¬ 
ings!—packed together like anchovies, the living and the dying fes¬ 
tering together, and the dead lying beneath them. European eye¬ 
witnesses assured me that the disembarking of this frightful cargo| 
could not be adequately described. The slaves were in a state of 
starvation, having had nothing to eat for several days. They were 
landed in Khartoum; the dead and many of the dying were tied by 
the ankles, and dragged along the ground by donkeys through the 
streets. The most malignant typhus, or plague, had’ been engendered 
among this mass of filth and misery, thus closely packed together. 
These creatures brought the plague to Khartoum, which, like a curse 
