[It Will Be Observed That At This Period Of The Expedition I Had Acquired An Extraordinary Influence Over The People, That Enabled Me To Exert An Authority Which Saved The Lives Of Many Unfortunate Creatures Who Would Otherwise Have Been Victims.]

There was among the slaves a woman who had been captured in the attack upon Fowooka.

This woman I have already mentioned as having a very beautiful boy, who at the time of the capture was a little more than a year old.

So determined was her character, that she had run away five times with her child, but on every occasion she had been recaptured, after having suffered much by hunger and thirst in endeavouring to find her way back to Unyoro through the uninhabited wilderness between Shooa and Karuma. On the last occasion of her capture, the Turks had decided upon her being incorrigible, therefore she had received 144 blows with the coorbatch (hippopotamus whip), and had been sold separately from her child to the party belonging to Mahommed Wat-el-Mek. Little Abbai had always been a great pet of Mrs. Baker's, and the unfortunate child being now motherless, he was naturally adopted, and led a most happy life. Although much under two years old, he was quite equal in precocity to a European child of three; in form and strength he was a young Hercules, and, although so young, he would frequently follow me out shooting for two or three miles, and return home with a guinea-fowl hanging over his shoulder, or his hands full of pigeons.

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