The boats are accordingly packed with a human cargo, and a portion of the trader's men accompany them to the Soudan, while the remainder of the party form a camp or settlement in the country they have adopted, and industriously plunder, massacre, and enslave, until their master's return with the boats from Khartoum in the following season, by which time they are supposed to have a cargo of slaves and ivory ready for shipment. The business thus thoroughly established, the slaves are landed at various points within a few days' journey of Khartoum, at which places are agents, or purchasers; waiting to receive them with dollars prepared for cash payments. The purchasers and dealers are, for the most part, Arabs. The slaves are then marched across the country to different places; many to Sennaar, where they are sold to other dealers, who sell them to the Arabs and to the Turks. Others are taken immense distances to ports on the Red Sea, Souakim, and Masowa, there to be shipped for Arabia and Persia. Many are sent to Cairo, and in fact they are disseminated throughout the slave-dealing East, the White Nile being the great nursery for the supply. The amiable trader returns from the White Nile to Khartoum; hands over to his creditor sufficient ivory to liquidate the original loan of 1,000 pounds, and, already a man of capital, he commences as an independent trader. Such was the White Nile trade when I prepared to start from Khartoum on my expedition to the Nile sources. Every one in Khartoum, with the exception of a few Europeans, was in favor of the slave trade, and looked with jealous eyes upon a stranger venturing within the precincts of their holy land; a land sacred to slavery and to every abomination and villany that man can commit. The Turkish officials pretended to discountenance slavery: at the same time every house in Khartoum was full of slaves, and the Egyptian officers had been in the habit of receiving a portion of their pay in slaves, precisely as the men employed on the White Nile were paid by their employers. The Egyptian authorities looked upon the exploration of the White Nile by a European traveller as an infringement of their slave territory that resulted from espionage, and every obstacle was thrown in my way. Foreseeing many difficulties, I had been supplied, before leaving Egypt, with a firman from H. E. Said Pasha the Viceroy, by the request of H. B. M. agent, Sir R. Colquhoun; but this document was ignored by the Governor-general of the Soudan, Moosa Pasha, under the miserable prevarication that the firman was for the Pasha's dominions and for the Nile; whereas the White Nile was not accepted as the Nile, but was known as the White River. I was thus refused boats, and in fact all assistance.