European Eye-Witnesses Assured Me That The Disembarking Of This Frightful Cargo Could Not Be Adequately Described.

The slaves were in a state of starvation, having had nothing to eat for several days.

They were landed in Khartoum; the dead and many of the dying were tied by the ankles, and dragged along the ground by donkeys through the streets. The most malignant typhus, or plague, had been engendered among this mass of filth and misery, thus closely packed together. Upon landing, the women were divided by the Egyptian authorities among the soldiers. These creatures brought the plague to Khartoum, which, like a curse visited upon this country of slavery and abomination, spread like a fire throughout the town, and consumed the regiments that had received this horrible legacy from the dying cargo of slaves. Among others captured by the authorities on a charge of slave-trading was an Austrian subject, who was then in the custody of the consul. A French gentleman, Monsieur Garnier, had been sent to Khartoum by the French Consulate of Alexandria on a special inquiry into the slave-trade; he was devoting himself to the subject with much energy.

While at Khartoum I happened to find Mahommed Her! the vakeel of Chenooda's party, who had instigated lily men to mutiny at Latooka, and had taken my deserters into his employ. I had promised to make an example of this fellow; I therefore had him arrested, and brought before the Divan. With extreme effrontery, he denied having had anything to do with the affair, adding to his denial all knowledge of the total destruction of his party and of my mutineers by the Latookas. Having a crowd of witnesses in my own men, and others that I had found in Khartoum who had belonged to Koorshid's party at that time, his barefaced lie was exposed, and he was convicted. I determined that he should be punished, as an example that would insure respect to any future English traveller in those regions. My men, and all those with whom I had been connected, had been accustomed to rely most implicitly upon all that I had promised, and the punishment of this man had been an expressed determination.

I went to the Divan and demanded that he should be flogged. Omer Bey was then Governor of the Soudan, in the place of Moosa Pasha deceased. He sat upon the divan, in the large hall of justice by the river. Motioning me to take a seat by his side, and handing me his pipe, he called the officer in waiting, and gave the necessary orders. In a few minutes the prisoner was led into the hall, attended by eight soldiers. One man carried a strong pole about seven feet long, in the centre of which was a double chain, riveted through in a loop. The prisoner was immediately thrown down with his face to the ground, while two men stretched out his arms and sat upon them; his feet were then placed within the loop of the chain, and the pole being twisted round until firmly secured, it was raised from the ground sufficiently to expose the soles of the feet.

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