The few Europeans who ever really opened transactions in these countries did indeed pay their people in hard cash, and refused to have anything to do either with the slave trade or cattle-stealing, limiting their operations exclusively to the purchase of ivory and to elephant-hunting in the districts adjacent to their settlements. Just as might be expected, however, they were soon compelled to withdraw from their undertaking—either because, on the one hand, the stock of ivory in their immediate vicinity was exhausted, or, on the other, because they found that they could not compete with the native firms, who were backed by the illegal means I have mentioned. Since their withdrawal, no new speculator has attempted to follow in their steps; and as year by year the Khartoom trade loses its European representatives, it appears as though, in course of time, the export business will pass out of European hands. Nothing will prevent this, unless some important modifications should occur in the southern provinces of Egypt. Sanguine of success, Ismail Pasha has projected the formation of a railway to Khartoom; and, considering the general aspect of affairs as I have related them, this great undertaking deserves the unqualified support of all who do not despair of the ultimate victory of right. A mere slave when at home, Ghattas’s plenipotentiary, Idrees, was here an important personage, invested with absolute power, and swaggered about like an autocrat. By birth a negro, he had not on that account less influence over the Nubians than any other official—for it is not according to the law of Islam to allow national enmity to be antagonistic to personal rank. I was received with all the courtesy due to my credentials, and for the first few days found myself literally loaded with presents. Provisions of every sort were placed at my disposal, whilst my people had free board for a month in Idrees’s quarters. Two neatly-built huts of moderate size, within the palisade, were prepared for me, but these were not nearly sufficient to accommodate me with all my baggage. The actual Seriba, about 200 paces square, was so crammed with huts, that not a spot could be discovered where it was possible to erect a more spacious residence. Outside the enclosure, where the buildings were more scattered over the fields, I was not permitted to lodge. I was told how it had happened, and was likely to happen again, that the natives skulked about at night and murdered people in their sleep. This statement I was forced, whether I would or not, to accept, and temporarily, at all events, to content myself with my cramped abode, eighteen feet across. [Sidenote: ACCOMMODATION IN THE SERIBA.]