Allorron Was In The Habit Of Despatching Messengers To Their Various
Camps (Seven Or Eight Days' March For A Running Negro) To Give The
Vakeels Notice Of The Arrival Of The Expected Vessels.
Many hundreds of
his people had been armed with guns by the traders, therefore his tribe
and the companies of Abou Saood were thoroughly incorporated, brigands
allied with brigands, and Gondokoro had become the nucleus to which the
spoil was concentrated.
These were people by whom the blessings of a good government were hardly
to be understood.
Unfortunately for Allorron, he had joined the slave-hunters of Abou
Saood against neighbours that were unpleasantly close to Gondokoro. The
Loquia, a most powerful tribe, only three days' march to the south-east,
had lost slaves and cattle by these depredations; thus, when the
slave-hunters' parties had quitted Gondokoro and returned to their
station in the interior, Loquia had invaded the unprotected Allorron,
and had utterly destroyed his district on the eastern mainland. For many
miles the country now resembled a very lovely park. Every habitation had
disappeared, and this formerly populous position was quite deserted by
the surviving inhabitants, who had taken refuge in the islands, or on
the west side of the river. At this season the entire country was
covered with a tender herbage - that species of fine grass, called by the
Arabs "negheel," which is the best pasturage for cattle. Allorron's
people dared not bring their herds to pasture upon this beautiful land
from whence they had been driven, as they were afraid that the news
would soon reach Loquia, who would pounce unexpectedly upon them from
the neighbouring forest.
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