'SIR SAMUEL BAKER AND THE SLAVE TRADE 
377 
floating vegetation proved so impassable an obstruction that, after 
fighting it for many weeks, the expedition was forced to retire, baffled, 
to Khartoum, Baker determining to return in the following season. 
On this occasion he succeeded in overcoming the obstructions, and 
reached Gondokoro on April 15, 1870. 
“Upon my arrival at Gondokoro,” says Mr. Baker, “I was looked 
upon as a spy sent by the British government. Whenever I approached 
the encampments of the various traders, 1 heard the clanking of fetters 
before I reached the station, as the slaves were being quickly driven 
into hiding-places to avoid inspection. They were chained by two 
rings secured round the ankles, and connected by three or four links. 
“Gondokoro was a perfect hell. It is utterly ignored by the Egyp¬ 
tian authorities, although well known to be a colony of cut-throats. 
Nothing would be easier than to send a few officers and two hundred 
men from Khartoum to form a military government, and thus impede 
the slave-trade; but a bribe from the traders to the authorities is suffi¬ 
cient to insure an uninterrupted asylum for any amount of villainy. 
The camps were full of slaves, and the Bari natives assured me that 
there were large depots of slaves in the interior belonging to the trad¬ 
ers that would be marched to Gondokoro for shipment to the Soudan 
a few hours after my departure. I was the great stumbling-block to 
the trade, and my presence at Gondokoro was considered as an unwar¬ 
rantable intrusion upon a locality sacred to slavery and iniquity. There 
were about six hundred of the traders’ people at Gondokoro, whose 
time was passed in drinking, quarreling and ill-treating the slaves.” 
With such people to deal with Baker had a task that seemed 
destined to failure. He had been at Gondokoro but a few days when 
he saw signs of discontent among his men, who had evidently been 
tampered with by the traders’ agents. This developed into something 
approaching an insurrection, which the leader had no small trouble to 
quell. Though he succeeded in this, he saw that he had almost hope¬ 
less material under his command. 
“From that moment,” he says, “I knew that my expedition was 
fated. This outbreak was an example of what was to follow. Previ¬ 
ous to leaving Khartoum I had felt convinced that I could not succeed 
with such villains for escort as these Khartoumers: thus I had applied 
