Several smaller companies having joined Ghattas’s expedition, the number of our caravan was a little under five hundred. Of these the armed men alone amounted to nearly two hundred; marching in single file they formed a long column, and constituted a force with which we might have crossed the largest State of Central Africa unmolested. Our course for six days would be through a notoriously hostile country, so that this protection was quite necessary; but the caravan, extending fully half a mile, was of a magnitude to require great order and circumspection. Each division had its banner, and to each was appointed its proper place in the procession. The different companies of the Khartoom merchants were distinguished by the colour of their banners, all emblazoned by the star and crescent of Islam. Instead of this, Ghattas, as a Christian, had a white flag, on which were worked the crescent and a St. Andrew’s cross. This compromise between the crescent and the true cross did not, however, exclude certain passages from the Koran, relating to the conquest of unbelievers, and which could not be permitted to be wanting on any Khartoom banner. The handsome flag of my own boat was lying wrapped away in a box. I confess I had no desire to make a display of it among savages, and in a region where its meaning could not be comprehended; but even if I had wished to exhibit it, I subsequently discovered that any attempt to do so would have been quite a failure. No Nubians would on any account have followed a flag which did not bear the crescent and the passages from the Koran. The boats on the Nile, it is true, when they carry or belong to Europeans, do not despise the European colours; but in the heart of the negro country, where no Egyptian authority exists, it is different, and consequently all European flags are worthless. The banner of Islam is to them a talisman, and they would consider it as sacrilege to replace it by the banner of any Christian country. Even the trading expeditions conducted by European merchants from Khartoom have conformed to this rule, and I have myself witnessed the flag waving on the Rohl River at the last settlement maintained by the brothers Poncet. [Sidenote: TRANSPORT OF BAGGAGE.]