"Herr Roth, well knowing that other Caravans were expected, applied for an escort of fifty men to scour the desert oases and borders of the desert, in which the 'captives' were stowed away; he might have set free one thousand or so, but he was refused. And he had an unpleasant correspondence with Baron de King, the French Consul-General, for reporting as one of the most energetic of the slave-dealers at Assiout, a Captain M. Magar Damian, the French Consular Agent. He was charged with _trop de zèle_, and was told officially, that is, unpleasantly, to mind his own business. However, he did good work by printing a map of the Libyan Desert, showing the five favourite stations for stowaways. These are chiefly the oases of Khargeh (El-Khárijeh, the 'outer') and Dakhleh (El-Dákhilah, the 'inner'), and neither had even a sentinel to stop the traffic. From the latter (in N. lat. 25°) the Caravans pass on to the Faráfarah Oasis and to Assiout, or to El-Bahriyeh and the Siwah Oases.[3] These favourite depôts are now guarded by a fair number of men; and sections of companies with dromedaries are also stationed in the Fazyúm, a notorious slaving province; at Turá, near Cairo, where the fellahs hide their goods in the Mukattam Hills; at Abusír, near Lake Mareotis; at Wardán, to command the line of the Natron Lakes, and at a few other crucial points. "Despite the Ministerial Circular, slaves poured in. Shortly after mid-May, eighty captives were taken at the Bolák Dakrúr station, on the west of the Nile and within sight of Cairo. They were found to be part of a batch of a hundred and twenty-six; the other forty-six had probably been sent forward and sold. In early June, some six weeks after the Assiout scandal, a third Caravan was reported to be making for that station from Dar-Fur, along the inland highway. When it arrived only thirty men and a hundred and sixty camels were counted: the slavers had heard of the capture and had left their chattels in the desert, some say with cut throats.[4] A fourth body was reported to be camping near one of the oases. About the same time a boat with ten slave-girls left Assiout for Cairo; on June 10, four Circassian girls were sold--one at Alexandria for £100, another at Assiout, and the two remaining at the capital, where they were secured for the highest harems. This branch of white slavery, though much reduced, still continues. In October, 1880, two white girls of eight and twelve years old were sold without opposition at Alexandria, and even on January 4, 1881, four more were landed at that port.