At the commencement of the real Bahr-al-Ghazal, where that broad lake-like stream is formed by the confluence of the Dyur (Jur) and other rivers, there was, before the uprising of the Mahdi and the consequent devastation of the Sudan, a large trading-station originally founded by the Nubian, Arab, and Coptic merchants of Khartum. This was named Mashra-ar-Rak--transcribed, in the mincing Turkish fashion, “Meshra-er-Rek.” Here merchants and travellers generally started on their land journeys into the Nyam-nyam countries. Miss Tinne had paused a long time at Mashra-ar-Rak, and it was supposed that there her expedition had contracted the severe malarial fevers which eventually caused the death of five out of its nine Europeans. Mashra-ar-Rak was situated on a lake-like swelling of the Bahr-al-Ghazal, which expanse is partly covered by four wooded islands. All the surroundings of this lake-like estuary are very low and swampy. In all directions the eyes rest on jungles of papyrus, with the exception of the few trees on the islands aforementioned. A short time before Schweinfurth reached this place with its dismal record of disease amongst Europeans, he heard that a French predecessor had died not far from the Bahr-al-Ghazal. This was Le Saint, a French naval officer, who had been despatched by the Paris Geographical Society to make that extended exploration of the whole of the region of the Bahr-al-Ghazal which Fate had destined Schweinfurth himself to accomplish.[83] Schweinfurth’s own expedition had to be conducted in a most economical and unobtrusive fashion. He made most of his great journeys between the Bahr-al-Ghazal and the Congo watershed on foot. Remembering that his expedition was purely scientific, and was financed by a scientific society, he very wisely concerned himself with no question of ethics or reform such as had hitherto caused all English explorers of these regions to be hindered as much as possible by Nubians, Arabs, and Turks. He was not there to undertake crusades, but to make collections. He thus won and retained the friendship and confidence of men of all colours, some of them, no doubt, great ruffians, but all made equally to subserve the interests of science by affording sympathetic support to one of the greatest and most genial of African explorers, Georg Schweinfurth. Schweinfurth was no sympathiser with the slave-trade and the barbarities to which it gave rise. “Throughout my wanderings,” he writes, “I was for ever puzzling out schemes for setting bounds to this inhuman traffic. On one point (i.e. the abolition of the slave-trade) all are unanimous,--that from Islam no help can be expected, and that with Islamism no pact can be made.” His reports on the behaviour of the slave-traders did a great deal to bring about the abolition of this devastation by Gordon Pasha and his officers some years later. CHAPTER XVIII SCHWEINFURTH’S ACHIEVEMENTS AND DESCRIPTIONS