The man holding this high position in the Soudan arose from humble circumstances. His real name was Edward Schnitzer. He was born at Oppeln in Silesia, in 1840, and shortly after his family removed to Neisse, where many of his relatives are living to-day. We know little about his youth, but we are told that the boy was an enthusiastic naturalist, fond of making collections of flowers and insects, and even at that time noted for his reserve and thoughtfulness. Both these characteristics are observable in the man. The study of nature was his principal recreation and compensated for his lack of human intercourse. But his conscientious devotion to science and his aversion to publicity leave us little knowledge of his accomplishments or his real sentiments. Even his most intimate friends knew little of his inner nature, and while his letters to European scholars reveal his varied activities, yet they are of no value in throwing light upon his nature, which makes it difficult to understand some of the actions of the man. Edward Schnitzer studied medicine in Breslau and Berlin in 1863-64 and took the doctor’s degree. It was his love of nature that led him to go abroad. He went to Trieste and Antivari, and from there, with a Turkish companion, Hakki Pasha, to Trebizond. He soon succeeded in gaining respect and influence. His facility in adapting himself to the habits of the places where he was stopping, the remarkable ease with which he learned languages (he spoke Turkish and Arabic as if they were his native tongues), and the success which attended his medical practice, quickly brought him fame and importance; and when, as was the custom in those countries, he changed his German name to a foreign one (Emin, “the Faithful”), he was hardly recognizable as a European. In the company of Hakki he explored Arabia and then went to Janina and Constantinople. When his protector died, the young physician returned home and devoted himself entirely to scientific pursuits. But soon the monotony of everyday life and its quiet regularity, the colorless northern landscape, and frequent cloudy skies became unendurable, and he suddenly decided to make a change. In 1876 he went south again, this time to Egypt. He reached there at just the right time, for the enterprising Khedive, Ismail Pasha, was attracting large numbers of Europeans to his country because of his extension of the limits of the ancient kingdom of Pharaoh far to the south and the west. Emin placed himself at the disposition of Gordon Pasha as a physician, Gordon at that time being governor of Hat-el-Estiva. He soon recognized Emin’s importance, and intrusted several diplomatic missions to negro chiefs in the south to him. When Gordon resigned his position in 1878 to enter upon a wider field of action, Emin became his successor and governed a territory in the Equatorial Provinces which stretched from Lado to the equator and was as large as France, Germany, and Austria combined.