trader's own profit--worth on an average five to six pounds each.

The boats are accordingly packed with a human cargo, and a portion of
the trader's men accompany them to the Soudan, while the remainder of
the party form a camp or settlement in the country they have adopted,
and industriously plunder, massacre, and enslave, until their master's
return with the boats from Khartoum in the following season, by which
time they are supposed to have a cargo of slaves and ivory ready for
shipment. The business thus thoroughly established, the slaves are
landed at various points within a few days' journey of Khartoum, at
which places are agents, or purchasers; waiting to receive them with
dollars prepared for cash payments. The purchasers and dealers are, for
the most part, Arabs. The slaves are then marched across the country to
different places; many to Sennaar, where they are sold to other dealers,
who sell them to the Arabs and to the Turks. Others are taken immense
distances to ports on the Red Sea, Souakim, and Masowa, there to be
shipped for Arabia and Persia. Many are sent to Cairo, and in fact they
are disseminated throughout the slave-dealing East, the White Nile being
the great nursery for the supply.

The amiable trader returns from the White Nile to Khartoum; hands over
to his creditor sufficient ivory to liquidate the original loan of
1,000 pounds, and, already a man of capital, he commences as an
independent trader.

Such was the White Nile trade when I prepared to start from Khartoum on
my expedition to the Nile sources. Every one in Khartoum, with the
exception of a few Europeans, was in favor of the slave trade, and
looked with jealous eyes upon a stranger venturing within the precincts
of their holy land; a land sacred to slavery and to every abomination