In the immediate proximity of the camp all was generally at peace; the Shillooks apparently submitted tamely enough to a Government which did not exercise any very tyrannical power, and which contented itself with demanding a supply of bullocks and a stated levy of provisions to maintain the troops. Notwithstanding this usual semblance of concord, the Governor was notoriously on terms of open enmity and feud with the Shillooks in the south. Kashgar, another descendant of the ancient reigning family, still maintained himself as an uncontrolled sovereign, and was able to render that part of the river extremely unsafe for navigation. Ever and again the Governor with his force, never more than 600 strong, was undertaking expeditions against them; but, as he himself told me, they never came to an actual engagement. Although the blacks, he said, might muster 20,000 or 30,000 strong, the second cannon shot was quite enough to make them scamper off, and leave their flocks and herds in the lurch; upon these the mounted Baggara, in the service of the Government, descended and made them an easy spoil. This nomadic race, from time immemorial, has ever, as I have already mentioned, been addicted to the plunder of cattle, and has always exhibited a preference for that occupation. In another respect the situation of the Government here is far from easy. Not only are the Shillooks at heart at enmity to it, but it excites the hostility of the trading companies who ascend the river. Nothing indicates the circumstances better than the expression of a member of one of these companies. “The Mudir,” he said, “doesn’t like to attack the Shillooks; he takes care of them, and only wants a few of their bullocks; but we—we should just like to annihilate them, devil’s brood as they are.” In fact, as the Mudir said to me, he only wanted the best of the Shillooks; the Shillooks know well enough that their “best” is their cattle, and this they are not really resigned passively to surrender, and so they go on and continue to be defiant, till they feel the grenades and rockets scorching their skins. For the future fortune of this favoured country I cannot anticipate much that is good. Whilst the Viceroy refuses to appoint Europeans as governors, like Munzinger in Massowa, his officers must fail in those qualifications which would be adequate for the successful administration of a newly-acquired negro territory. The visible retrogression of the Egyptian Soudan with respect to cultivation, confirms this unfavourable foreboding. Ismail Pasha centres all his hope upon the stimulating influence of a railway which shall connect Egypt with Khartoom, and very likely he may witness commerce enlarged to an unsuspected magnitude; one thing, however, there is which he cannot prevent, and that is the depopulation of the Shillook lands. Since they remain closed to European civilisation, and since the husbandmen in Egypt are sufficiently engrossed in acquiring fresh soil