As concerns cotton, which before the Mahdist invasion was seemingly cultivated in a sufficiently considerable degree, I hold it on good authority that in Cairo and Lower Egypt some little disquietude is being shown on the subject of the activity displayed by the Belgians on the Upper Nile, and that some apprehension is felt there of a cotton competition in the near future. FOOTNOTES: [8] September, 1904. [9] _New Africa_, p. 68. [10] _New Africa_, p. 67. [11] _Soudan Gazette_, published by authority of the Soudan Government, No. 47, Khartoum, 1st May, 1903: “It is notified for information that the following articles are governmental monopolies in the following districts: Rubber and gutta percha, in the whole of the Soudan, excepting Kordofan. Ivory, in the Bahr-el-Ghazal and Fashoda.... (Signed) Reginald Wingate, Governor-General.” CHAPTER X AN APPEAL TO BELGIUM TO SUPPRESS THE SLAVE TRADE Slavery is as ancient as war, and war as old as human nature. Upon this premise Voltaire philosophised when his thought reverted to the early inequity of human life. Christian nations were deep in the slave trade in the sixteenth century. A black cloud of human flesh, aggregating sixteen million souls, was imported into America upon Western slave dhows in three centuries, exclusive of the twenty-odd million Negroes who perished in transit. More atrocious than the pestilential slave dhow was the slaughter of blacks by the slave-raider, that fiend incarnate who until a few years ago carried on his inhuman traffic under the very gaze of Christian Europe. Indeed, Europe herself was a slave-dealer for centuries. Some of her Governments sanctioned it in terms unspeakably callous. There was little pity and less mercy in officially lading “tons of niggers” for American ports. [Illustration: Bridge Made of Cement, Boma.] Late in the eighteenth century, Great Britain had championed the cause of humanity and sought a remedy for the horrible conditions which slavery entailed. The movement which, assuming definite shape about the time of the Declaration of Independence, had found able and eloquent advocacy in such men as Granville Sharpe, Clarkson, Wilberforce, and William Pitt. These staunch humanitarians, after what seemed the hopeless labour of many years, finally triumphed so far as to impel the Vienna Congress of 1815 and the Verona Congress of 1822 to forbid any civilised nation to carry on the slave trade.