In June, 1862, the Bakers reached Khartum. After a long stay at the Pethericks’ house, Baker decided, as already related, to go in search of Speke. His wife, the present Lady Baker, accompanied him. As already related, she was a Hungarian lady of great beauty, and possessed of extraordinary courage. Her fame as “_the_ Lady” (Es-sitt) still lingers among the Nile Negroes. It has already been shown that Baker succeeded in being the first European to greet Speke and Grant. He received from these travellers the legacy to complete their task of ascertaining definitely the existence of the western Nile lake (Albert), of which Speke had heard under the name of Luta Nzige. On the 26th of March, 1863, the Bakers left Gondokoro on this errand. Muhammad Wad-al-Mek, De Bono’s agent, and all the other Nubian Nile traders, did their very utmost to prevent Baker returning along Speke’s route through the Bari country. They incited his Khartum men to mutiny. Baker, being unable to obtain porters, owing to the excessive hostility of the slave-traders, employed the camels he had brought with him from Khartum for his transport. As the slave-traders had threatened, if he followed in their footsteps, to raise the natives about him, he determined to reach the back country of Lotuka first, and therefore deliberately strewed some of his goods in the way so as to delay the slave-traders, who stopped to pick them up. He was outdone at his own game, for a large caravan of “Turks” reached the Elliria country nearly as soon as he did. The leader of this expedition was one Ibrahim. Mrs. Baker resolved to see what could be done by a direct appeal to whatever the man might possess of generosity. The Bakers threatened that if he did them harm he would probably be hung at Khartum, while if he assisted them to see this lake, they would see he was well rewarded. The result was that a truce was patched up between the slave-traders and Baker’s small expedition. Nevertheless, a mutiny happened among Baker’s camel-men in the vicinity of Lotuka. Some of these men ran away and joined a slave-trading party, which, however, was massacred by the Lotuka. Henceforth Baker’s few men stuck to him faithfully, in terror of what might happen to them from his evil eye.