At sunset we reached a place on the right bank, which will always retain a certain notoriety in the history of the White Nile, as having once been the headquarters of the renowned robber chief, Mohammed Kher. The raised works, having on their interior traces of decayed walls of earth, and surrounded by deep trenches, mark the site of Mohammed Kher’s seriba. To judge by the heaps of bones which still exist, the number of cattle slaughtered and feasted on must have been something enormous. Booty was plundered from far and near, but the Shillooks were the greatest sufferers. Mohammed Kher, with his contingent of well-mounted Baggara, was not only for many years a terror to the neighbouring negro races, but could defy the authority of the Governor at Khartoom. Yet principally it was he who taught the people of Khartoom how, by means of earthworks and regular ramparts, to intimidate the natives and bring them into subjection. Many human bones, the relics of slaves carried off by sickness, as well as the skulls of asses and horses, are found everywhere about. As a consequence of the burning of the steppes, they are frequently noticed in a half-charred condition. Throughout Africa burnt human bones are ever the marks which the slave trade leaves behind. Not far from this ill-famed place we lay-to alongside the village of Kaka, the most northerly place inhabited by Shillooks on the White Nile, and at which the Egyptian Government maintained a depôt for corn. Twenty years ago hundreds of Dinka villages stood on this side of the river. From the descriptions of travellers who accompanied the expeditions sent out by Mehemet Ali to discover the sources of the Nile, it has been ascertained that the number of the population here was formerly as important as it now is in the very heart of the Shillook country. As a result of the incessant ravages of Mohammed Kher, the entire eastern shore has degenerated into a forest waste. The river still parts the separate districts of the hostile tribes; but the Shillooks have attempted to settle nowhere except at Kaka in the deserted district; the Dinka, on their part, having withdrawn some days’ journey into the interior. Soon after the arrival of the boat, a great crowd of naked Shillooks, prompted by curiosity, assembled on the shore, my dog still being the chief attraction. The first sight of a throng of savages, suddenly presenting themselves in their native nudity, is one from which no amount of familiarity can remove the strange impression; it takes abiding hold upon the memory, and makes the traveller recall anew the civilisation he has left behind. One of the Khartoom men disturbed my pensive contemplations by pointing to the Shillooks, and making a remark that they looked like Christians. I punished him with the scornful reply to the effect that of whatever faith the savages were, I could answer for it that they had the good luck to be neither Jews nor Mohammedans.