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:
