Great experience on the White Nile when with
a former master, and that the natives would do nothing without receiving
cows as payment; that it was of no use to be good to them, as they had
no respect for any virtue but "force;" that we should most likely be
murdered; but that if I ordered him to go, he was ready to obey.
I was delighted with Richarn's rough and frank fidelity. Ordering the
horses to be brought, I carefully pared their feet. Their hard flinty
hoofs, that had never felt a shoe, were in excellent order for a gallop,
if necessary. All being ready, I sent for the chief of Gondokoro.
Meanwhile a Bari boy arrived, sent by Koorshid Aga, to act as my
interpreter.
The Bari chief was, as usual, smeared all over with red ochre and fat,
and had the shell of a small land tortoise suspended to his elbow as an
ornament. I proposed to him my plan of riding quickly through the Bari
tribe to Moir. He replied, "Impossible! If I were to beat the great
nogaras (drums), and call my people together to explain who you are,
they would not hurt you; but there are many petty chiefs who do not obey
me, and their people would certainly attack you when crossing some
swollen torrent, and what could you do with only a man and a boy?"
His reply to my question concerning the value of beads corroborated
Richarn's statement: nothing could be purchased for anything but cattle.
The traders had commenced the system of stealing herds of cattle from
one tribe to barter with the next neighbor; thus the entire country was
in anarchy and confusion, and beads were of no value. My plan for a dash
through the country was impracticable.
I therefore called my vakeel, and threatened him with the gravest
punishment on my return to Khartoum. I wrote to Sir R. Colquhoun, H.M.
Consul-General for Egypt, which letter I sent by one of the return
boats, and I explained to my vakeel that the complaint to the British
authorities would end in his imprisonment, and that in case of my death
through violence he would assuredly be hanged. After frightening him
thoroughly, I suggested that he should induce some of the mutineers, who
were Dongolowas (his own tribe), many of whom were his relatives, to
accompany me, in which case I would forgive them their past misconduct.
In the course of the afternoon he returned with the news that he had
arranged with seventeen of the men, but that they refused to march
toward the south, and would accompany me to the east if I wished to
explore that part of the country. Their plea for refusing a southern
route was the hostility of the Bari tribe.
