Brave Men and Women: Their Struggles, Failures, And TriumphsFuller, Osgood E. (Osgood Eaton)
History
Brave Men and Women: Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs
Fuller, Osgood E. (Osgood Eaton)
Biography
Gutter children were his especial care. These he cleansed and clothed,
and the boys he trained for a life at sea. His evening classes were his
delight, and he read and taught his children with the same ardor with
which he had led the Chinese troops into battle. For the boys he found
suitable places on board vessels respectably owned, and he never lost
sight of his _proteges_. A large map of the world, stuck over with pins,
showed him at a glance where he had last heard from one of these rescued
waifs. "God bless the Kernel," was chalked upon many a wall in
Gravesend; and well might the poor bless the man who personified to them
the life and daily walk of one who "had been with Jesus." To them he was
the "Good Samaritan," pouring in oil and wine; and they blessed and
reverenced him, and gave him a love which he valued more than royal
gifts.
We must, however, hasten on, and see him transferred from Gravesend to
the Danube, and thence to the Soudan. He succeeded Sir Samuel Baker in
the government of these distant territories in Egypt in 1873. The
Khedive Ismail offered him £10,000 a year, but he would only accept
£2,000, as he knew the money would have to be extorted from the wretched
fellaheen. His principal work was to conquer the insurgent slave-dealers
who had taken possession of the country and enslaved the inhabitants.
The lands south of Khartoum had long been occupied by European traders,
who dealt in ivory, and had thus "opened up the country." This opening
up was a terrible scourge to the natives, because these European
traffickers soon began to find out that "black ivory" was more valuable
than white. So they formed fortified posts, called sceribas, and
garrisoned them with Arab ruffians, who harried the country and
organized manhunts on a gigantic scale. The profits were enormous, but
the "bitter cry" of Africa began to make itself heard in distant Europe,
and the so-called Christian slave-dealers found it more prudent to
withdraw. This they did without loss, for they sold their stations to
Arabs, and the trade in human beings went on as merrily as ever. Dr.
Schweinfurth, the African explorer and botanist, visited one of these
slave-dealing princes in 1871, and found him surrounded by an almost
regal court, and possessed of more than vice-regal power. He was lord of
thirty stations, all strongly fortified, and stretching like a chain
into the very heart of Africa. Thus his armies of fierce soldiery, Arab
and black, were able to make raids over whole provinces, and gather in
the great human harvest to supply the demands of Egypt, Turkey, and
Arabia. This famous man was named Sebehr Rahma; and although he was
defeated by Colonel Gordon and sent down to Cairo, he never quite lost
favor at the Egyptian Court, and was not long since appointed commander
in chief of the Soudan, to uphold the power of Egypt against the Mahdi!
The scandals of the slave-trade, combined with the lust of conquest,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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