"When all was ready the official proclamation announcing the annexation of the country to the Khedive's dominions was read at the foot of the staff, and as the last sentence was uttered, the flag was run to the top of the pole and immediately fluttered in the breeze. The officers waved their swords, the soldiers presented arms, and the battery fired a royal salute. The natives had been invited to witness the ceremony, and they came in large numbers. When the artillery was fired they were greatly astonished, as few of them had ever heard anything of the kind before, and their surprise was increased when the troops indulged in a sham battle, during which they fired about ten thousand rounds of blank cartridges. They were not at all friendly to the annexation, as they had been persuaded by the slave-traders that the movement was intended for their oppression, and they would all be carried into captivity." Frank continued his notes on the history of the place: [Illustration: AUSTRIAN MISSION-HOUSE AT GONDOKORO.] "The Austrian government established a mission at Gondokoro in 1853, and built a church of bricks which were made of the clay found in the neighborhood. The mission was discontinued in 1858, and of twenty missionaries that went there to preach the Gospel to the natives thirteen died of fever, two of other diseases, and two others went away with their health so broken down that they died soon after reaching Khartoum. The natives tore down the mission church and pounded the bricks into dust, which they mixed with oil; they anointed their bodies with the paste, which they pronounced an excellent substitute for red paint. All missionary efforts were abandoned, to the great delight of the slave-traders, who had found them interfering with their business. "From that time down to the arrival of Baker, in 1871, the town resumed its former condition and appearance, as a station of the ivory-merchants and slave-traders. There was no law in Gondokoro, and very little order, and if anybody chose to commit a crime there was hardly a probability that he would be punished for it. Everybody who went there for any purpose other than trading was regarded as a nuisance, and the merchants were not slow to excite the natives against him. [Illustration: VIEW OF GONDOKORO, FROM THE RIVER.] "Baker erected a line of earthworks for the defence of the place, and built warehouses for keeping his goods and military stores. After his departure some of the buildings erected by him were pulled down, and the material became scattered and lost. The military station was made on the bank of a small stream which enters the Nile at this point, but it is too shallow to admit steamers and sail-boats, which are consequently moored to the bank of the river." [Illustration: COLONEL ABD-EL-KADER.]