The Break-Up Of The White Nile Slave-Trade
Involved The Depression Of Trade In Khartoum, As The Market Had Supplied
The Large Bands Of Slave-Hunters.
The ivory of the numerous adventurers
still remained in the White Nile stations, as they feared confiscation
should their vessels be captured with the ever accompanying slave cargo.
Thus little ivory arrived at Khartoum to meet the debts of the traders
to the merchants in Cairo and Alexandria.
These owed Manchester and
Liverpool for calicoes supplied, which had been forwarded to the Soudan.
The direct blow at the White Nile slave-trade was an indirect attack
upon the commerce of the country, which was inseparably connected with
the demand of the Soudan employers of brigands.
This slight outline of the situation will exhibit the difficulties of
the Khedive in his thankless and Herculean task of cleansing the Augean
stables. He incurred the wrath of general discontent; his own officials
accused him of deserting the Mahommedan cause for the sake of European
Kudos, and while he sacrificed his popularity in Egypt, his policy was
misconstrued by the powers he had sought to gratify. He was accused of
civilizing "through the medium of fire and sword" by the same English
journals which are now extolling the prowess of the British arms in
Caffraria and the newly-annexed Transvaal!
In this equivocal position it would have been natural either to have
abandoned the enterprise at the termination of my own engagement, or to
have placed a Mahommedan officer in charge of the new provinces.
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