All the preparations having been completed, they ascend the Nile in a regular squadron. Every expedition means war; and, according to its magnitude, is provided with one hundred to one thousand armed men. The soldiers employed consist of the miserable Dongolowie, who carry double-barrelled shot-guns and knives, and are chiefly noted for their huge appetites and love of marissa (beer). Each large dealer has his own territory, and he resents promptly any attempt of another trader to trespass thereon. For instance, Agate, the most famous of all African slave-traders, knew, and his men frequently visited, the Victoria Nyanza, long before Speke ever dreamed of it. Agate’s station is now near the Nyanza, and he keeps up a heavy force there, as indeed he does at all his stations. When the expedition is ready, it moves slowly up to the Neam-Neam country, for instance, and if one tribe is hostile to another, he joins with the strongest and takes his pay in slaves. Active spies are kept in liberal pay to inform him of the number and quality of the young children; and when the chief believes he can steal one hundred he settles down to work, for that figure means four thousand dollars. He makes a landing with his human hounds, after having reconnoitred the position,--generally in the night time. At dawn he moves forward on the village, and the alarm is spread among the Negroes, who herd together behind their aboriginal breastplates, and fire clouds of poisoned arrows. The trader opens with musketry, and then begins a general massacre of men, women, and children. The settlement, surrounded by inflammable grass, is given to the flames, and the entire habitation is laid in ashes. Probably out of the wreck of one thousand charred and slaughtered people, his reserve has caught the one hundred coveted women and children, who are flying from death in wild despair. They are yoked together by a long pole, and marched off from their homes forever. One-third of them may have the small-pox; and then with this infected cargo the trader proceeds to his nearest station. Thence the Negroes are clandestinely sent across the desert to Kordofan, whence, they are dispersed over Lower Egypt and other markets. It not unfrequently happens that the Negroes succeed in killing their adversaries in these combats. But the blacks here are not brave. They generally fly after a loss of several killed, except with the Neam-Neams, who always fight with a bravery commensurate with their renown as cannibals.