As for Sir Samuel Baker, we take leave of him here as one of the great explorers of the Nile. He returned to the regions of the great lakes in 1869, having been appointed for four years in charge of an expedition to subdue and annex to the Egyptian Empire the equatorial regions of the Nile basin. This object involved him in incessant fighting in Unyoro, with the slave-traders between Unyoro and Gondokoro, and with the Bari. Some of these conflicts were forced on him; others, it is to be feared, he precipitated by his determination to enlarge the territories of the Egyptian Sudan. His time would seem to have been passed mainly in warfare with one enemy or another, or in laying very solidly the foundations of a civilised administration. His stay in Equatoria resulted in but little addition to our knowledge of the Nile and its affluents. A good many of his efforts for the welfare of the country were thwarted by the Egyptian Governor-General at Khartum, and after his departure, in 1873, some of his worst enemies among the slave-traders were reinstated. This much must always be recorded to the credit of Sir Samuel Baker’s work on the Upper Nile: he inspired universal respect among the fair-dealing natives; he, first of all, broke the back of the immense slave-trading industry which had sprung up on the Mountain Nile, in Unyoro, and in the Acholi countries; throughout these regions the natives can remember but one great and good administrator before the present régime, and that is Sir Samuel Baker. “Gordoom” Pasha is but a name, and represents little to their minds; Emin they only remembered as an enthusiastic naturalist, who did but little to check the rapine and wrong-doing of his Sudanese soldiers; but “Baker Basha” is, in the remembrance of the old people, the one heroic White man they have known: terrible in battle, scrupulously just, at all times kind and jovial in demeanour amongst friends; a born ruler over a savage people. CHAPTER XVI ALEXANDRINE TINNE AND THEODOR VON HEUGLIN The journeys of Petherick and Miani in the western Nile basin have already been described. The very interesting region of the Bahr-al-Ghazal, however, had been relatively neglected by scientific explorers down to the beginning of the sixties of the last century. Petherick’s own map of these regions was not published till 1869. There were two obstacles to water travel in this direction: the sudd, and the terrible fevers which attacked Europeans. The introduction of steamers on the Upper Nile to some extent enabled Europeans to force their way up streams which were not to be penetrated by sailing-vessels. Quite a rendezvous had been created at a place called Mashra-ar-Rak, where many great streams coming from the Nyam-nyam country enter the Bahr-al-Ghazal, which, as a geographical term, applied to the western lake-like affluent of the Nile, may be said to begin its course here. [Illustration: ALEXANDRINE TINNE.]