Uganda professing friendship and offering an army of 6000 men for,—he did not know what, but to punish any natives who might appear to be antagonistic, especially Kabba Rega.
By March, 1873, reinforcements from Gondokoro arrived in pitiable plight. Baker’s forces were now 620 strong. He re-inforced his various military stations. Then he liberated the numerous slaves the upward troops had taken from the slave hunters. Most of these were women and back in their native country. They accepted liberty with demonstrations of joy, rushed to the officers and men on whom they lavished hugs and kisses, and danced away in a delirium of excitement.
Colonel Baker’s time would expire in April. Therefore he timed his return to Gondokoro so as to be there by the first of the month, 1873. The whole situation was changed. There was scarcely a vestige of the neat station he had left. The slave dealers had carried things with a high hand, and had demoralized the troops. Filth and disorder had taken the place of cleanliness and discipline. Things were put to rights by May, and on the 25 of that month Baker started down the Nile, leaving his “Forty Thieves” as part of the Gondokoro garrison.
On June 29, Colonel Baker, Mrs. Baker and the officers of this celebrated expedition arrived at Kartoum, and reached Cairo on August 24, whence they sailed for England.
He concludes his history thus:—“The first steps in establishing the authority of a new government among tribes hitherto savage and intractable were of necessity accompanied by military operations. War is inseparable from annexation, and the law of force, resorted to in self-defence, was absolutely indispensable to prove the superiority of the power that was eventually to govern. The end justified the means.
“At the commencement of the expedition I had felt that the object of the enterprise—‘the suppression of the slave trade’—was one for which I could confidently ask a blessing.
“A firm belief in Providential support has not been unrewarded. In the midst of sickness and malaria we had strength; from acts of treachery we were preserved unharmed; in personal encounters we remained unscathed. In the end, every opposition
was overcome: hatred and subordination yielded to discipline and order. A paternal government extended its protection through lands hitherto a field for anarchy and slavery. The territory within my rule was purged from the slave trade. The natives of the great Shooli tribe, relieved from their oppressors, clung to the protecting government. The White Nile, for a distance of 1,600 miles from Kartoum to Central Africa, was cleansed from the abomination of a traffic which had hitherto sullied its waters.
GORDON AS MANDARIN.