CHAPTER XXV.
I SEND TO GONDOKORO FOR REINFORCEMENTS.
On 25th November, 1872, I started Wat-el-Mek to Gondokoro with a force
of irregulars, in addition to a captain and twenty regular troops in
charge of the post. His party consisted of 100 men.
The fleet from Gondokoro had left on the 3rd of November, 1871: thus it
was natural to suppose that reinforcements had arrived from Khartoum,
according to my written instructions on that date. I now wrote to Raouf
Bey at head-quarters, to send up 200 men under the command of
Lieutenant-Colonel Tayib Agha, of the Soudani regiment. I also wrote for
a supply of cattle, as my stock had dwindled to a small herd of milch
cows, and the people at Fabbe had no meat except the flesh of any game
that might be killed.
A short time after the departure of Wat-el-Mek and his party for
Gondokoro, Suleiman the vakeel arrived from Fabbo with the intelligence
that a large body of Abou Saood's slave-hunters, including 3,000
Makkarika cannibals, had arrived on the Nile from the far west, with the
intention of taking the ivory from Fabbo!
It appeared that Abou Saood had gone from Gondokoro to his station at
the Bohr, upon the White Nile; from thence he had sent a party with a
letter to Atroosh, the vakeel of the Makkarika station, about 200 miles
distant, with orders that he should send a powerful force, with
sufficient carriers, to take the ivory by violence from Fabbo.
Abou Saood had not expected that the people whom he had left at that
station would have enlisted under the government standard. Thus he
imagined they would at once fraternize with the invading force.
The natives of the country were thoroughly alarmed, as the cannibals
were eating the children of the Koshi country on the west bank of the
Nile, in about 3 degrees latitude; and should they cross the river, the
Madis and Shoolis expected the same fate.
I ordered Suleiman (who had received a letter from Atroosh) to take a
letter from me to Ali Emmeen, the vakeel of the invading force,
instructing him to present himself before me at Fatiko instantly with an
escort of his own people, limited to twenty-five men. At the same time I
gave instructions to the natives upon no account to furnish boats for a
larger party.
After some days' absence Suleiman returned, but without Ali Emmeen, who
was afraid to appear. This vakeel had received my verbal assurance from
Suleiman that, should any persons attempt the passage of the river
without my permission, they would be instantly shot; at the same time,
if he wished to convey the ivory to Gondokoro by the usual route, he
could do so with an escort of regulars.
