It is supposed that about 15,000 of the Khedive's subjects who should
have been industriously working and paying their taxes in Egypt were
engaged in the so-called ivory trade and slave-hunting of the White
Nile.

Each trader occupied a special district, where, by a division of his
forces in a chain of stations, each of which represented about 300 men,
he could exercise a right of possession over a certain amount of assumed
territory.

In this manner enormous tracts of country were occupied by the armed
bands from Khartoum, who could make alliances with the native tribes to
attack and destroy their neighbours, and to carry off their women and
children, together with vast herds of sheep and cattle.

I have already fully described this system in "The Albert N'yanza,"
therefore it will be unnecessary to enter into minute details in the
present work. It will be sufficient, to convey an idea of the extended
scale of the slave-hunting operations, to explain that an individual
trader named Agad assumed the right over nearly NINETY THOUSAND SQUARE
MILES of territory. Thus his companies of brigands could pillage at
discretion, massacre, take, burn, or destroy throughout this enormous
area, or even beyond this broad limit, if they had the power.

It is impossible to know the actual number of slaves taken from Central
Africa annually; but I should imagine that at least fifty thousand are
positively either captured and held in the various zareebas (or camps)
or are sent via the White Nile and the various routes overland by Darfur
and Kordofan. The loss of life attendant upon the capture and subsequent
treatment of the slaves is frightful. The result of this forced