The Sheikh, in the course of his narrative, affords us a good deal of information, which applies equally well to the present day, on the state of slavery in the parts of Africa he visited. According to his unconscious representation, the Mohammedan states which have formed on the northern limits of Negroland have used the superior power they have acquired from semi-civilisation as a means of preying on their savage brethren. In England, forests have been said to be excrescences of the earth given by God to men to pay their debts withal. In Africa, the princes and great people regard their fellow-creatures in the same light. This is, perhaps, the chief reason why those countries, in spite of their natural advantages, remain in their present backward state. There seems to be only one way to induce them to abandon their man-hunting propensities,—namely, the development of regular commerce; and there is ground for hoping that the progress of discovery may lead to occasions of intercourse, and to the signing of treaties which may cease some day to be mere inoperative documents. When we can safely get at Central Africa, and discover some means of obtaining its productions to meet a regular demand, it will be easy to divert its population from what will then be the unprofitable employment of stealing one another. It is on this ground that the exploration of its water-outlets towards the Atlantic is so important. Darfur and Wadaï, however, belong to Eastern Africa, the proper approach to which is the Nile. If a regular government were established in Egypt, exercising its authority firmly over the southern provinces that now, for all practical purposes, are but nominally subject, commerce would soon begin to flow in its natural channel, and merchandise, which is now principally brought across the desert, would be directed to the nearest point upon the Nile, which would be soon laden with fleets of boats dropping down with the current. There are the elements of an empire more important than Hindustan, between Alexandria and the fourth parallel of North Latitude. BAYLE ST. JOHN. CONTENTS. * * * * * PART I.—DARFUR. * * * * * CHAPTER I. Parentage of the Sheikh — His Grandfather starts on a Pilgrimage — Adventures — Mekka — Jeddah — A Man from Sennaar — Departure for that Country — Reception — Fate of his Family — Omar — His Pilgrimage — A Meeting in the Desert — A Rendezvous — Omar is deceived by his Father — Journeys to Sennaar — A Quarrel — He returns towards Egypt — The Desert — Return to Tunis — Birth of the Sheikh — His Father settles in Egypt — Goes again to Sennaar — The Sheikh at Cairo — Ahmed-el-Bedawee — Preparations for Journey to Darfur — Departure Page 1