Towards Khartoum, must be a damning proof of complicity on the
part of certain government officials.
Thus it is plain that, while I was endeavouring to do my duty, others
who should have been supporting me were actually supporting the
slave-hunters. No people could have had the absurd audacity to attempt
the passage of the river in front of Fashoda - a government station,
garrisoned by two regiments, and provided with two steamers - unless they
were in league with the officials.
My personal interference has rendered the slave trade of the White Nile
impossible so long as the government is determined that it shall be
impossible. At the close of the expedition, the higher officials had
been changed, and the country appeared to be in good hands. The governor
of Fashoda, Jusef Effendi, had captured the slave vessels of Abou Saood
according to my instructions. Ismail Ayoub Pacha had been appointed
governor of Khartoum. Hussein Khalifah, the Arab desert sheik, was
governor of Berber, and various important changes had been made among
the higher authorities throughout the Soudan, which proved that the
Khedive was determined upon reform.
One grand and sweeping reform was absolutely necessary to extinguish the
slave trade of Central Africa, and this I lead the honour to suggest: -
"That all the present existing traders or tenants of the White Nile
should be expelled from the country, precisely as I had expelled them
from the territory under my command." The government would then assume
the monopoly of the ivory trade of the White Nile, and the natives would
in a few years be restored to confidence.
So long as the so-called traders of Khartoum should be permitted to
establish themselves as independent piratical societies in the Nile
Basin, the slave trade would continue, and the road through Darfur and
Kordofan would be adopted in place of the tabooed White Nile.
Should the White Nile companies be totally disbanded, the people now
engaged must return to their original agricultural pursuits in the
Soudan, and their labour would tend to an increase of the revenue, and
to the general prosperity of the country.
I have already published so much on the subject of the slave trade in
"The Albert N'yanza," that I fear to repeat what I have before so
forcibly expressed. I have never changed my original opinions on this
question, and I can only refer the public to page 313, vol. ii., of that
work, whence I take the following extract: - "Stop the White Nile trade;
prohibit the departure of any vessels from Khartoum to the south, and
let the Egyptian government grant a concession to a company for the
White Nile, subject to certain conditions, and to a special supervision
. . . .
. . . "Should the slave trade be suppressed, there will be a, good
opening for the ivory trade; the conflicting trading parties being
withdrawn, and the interest of the trade exhibited by a single company,
the natives would no longer be able to barter ivory for cattle; thus
they would be forced to accept other goods in exchange.
