There seems to have been little, if any, international jealousy in this wonderful field of exploration between 1840 and 1860. Khartum was the rendezvous, the principal depot of the Europeans, and throughout all these years was under a Turkish governor. Life in Khartum between 1850 and 1860 was by no means devoid of attractions. Several of the Europeans who made it their headquarters brought out their wives with them. Others were married to handsome Abyssinian women. The houses of Egyptian style were comfortable and cool. The place swarmed with strange new beasts and birds; indeed, nearly every house included a menagerie in one of its yards. A great slave-market brought before the eyes of astonished and interested Europeans nearly all the principal Negro types from as far west as Wadai and Darfur, from the confines of Abyssinia on the east, from the lands of the naked Nile Negroes on the south; stalwart, lighter-coloured, bearded Nyam-nyam cannibals from the southwest, coal-black Madi, here and there an Akka Pygmy, thin-shanked Dinka and Shiluk, sturdy Bongo, and handsome Gala. “There ain’t no Ten Commandments” might with some justice have been said of society at Khartum. At any rate it was much untrammelled as regards the more wearisome conventions of civilised life. Nobody inquired if M. Dubois was legally married to Mme. Dubois, and perhaps the treatment of the doubtful Mme. Dubois as a respectable married woman by blue-eyed strait-souled Mrs. Jones ended by Mme. Dubois becoming legally united to her spouse later on at Cairo, and finishing the rest of her life as a happy and perfectly respectable person. The air was full of wonderment. Improvements made year by year in firearms resulted in marvellous big-game shooting. Though there were bad fevers to be got in the Bahr-al-Ghazal, the climate of Khartum itself was not necessarily unhealthy. The post seems to have arrived across the desert on camels at least once a month. The tyranny, social and administrative, of the British military officer and his dame was not to come for many years; the “smart” hotel was absent; provisions were good, plentiful, and cheap. Those are times that the African explorer of to-day looks back upon with something like a sigh. [Illustration: THE RIVER SOBAT.] CHAPTER X MISSIONARIES AND SNOW-MOUNTAINS