Arabs. He described vividly how men on camels suddenly appeared while he
was in the wilderness with his flock, and how he was forcibly seized and
thrust into a large gum sack, and slung upon the back of a camel. Upon
screaming for help, the sack was opened, and an Arab threatened him with
a knife should he make the slightest noise. Thus quieted, he was carried
hundreds of miles through Kordofan to Dongola on the Nile, at which
place he was sold to slave-dealers, and taken to Cairo to be sold to the
Egyptian government as a drummer-boy. Being too young he was rejected,
and while in the dealer's hands he heard from another slave, of the
Austrian Mission at Cairo, that would protect him could he only reach
their asylum. With extraordinary energy for a 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 as much of
the Christian religion as he could understand. 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