“I remember very well, sir, when dey took me. My mother was out when a lot of mens come down and took all de little childrens dey see. Dey took me with dem to Khartoum, and dere my mother found me. Dey let her stop with me for a long time. She begged dem to let her have her little boy back, but dey say, ‘No, unless you steal two little children; den you shall have him back.’ Den I was sold to somebody else; after dat Gordon Pasha find me, and he take me and give me to Mr. Felkin, and he has been good to me ever since.” He gave me the name of the country he came from, but I forget it, adding, “It is the next country but one to the Niam-Niams.”
I had heard they were cannibals, so I said to Mahoom—
“What do they eat, Mahoom?”
“Dey eat de flesh of beobles,” he replied.
“But,” I said, “why don’t they eat antelopes and other animals?”
“Dey say de flesh of beobles is much nicer,” he replied.
He, of course, was disgusted with them. I found also that if a relation dies they bury that relation in close relation to them, that is, at the entrance to the hut; and if a baby, they send it to the relatives they have most respect for, and these relatives, to show their respect for their friends, eat the baby—cooked, I presume, but that I am not sure of.
About noon M. Demetrius Mosconas (who spoke English fairly well, and is, in a certain sense, a brother) asked me to go and see his son, who was very ill. I did so, and found him suffering from acute rheumatism. Mosconas, it seems, was engaged by the Government in sinking wells in some outlying districts, and his son, who partly superintended this work, must have contracted this disease by sleeping out, as, although the days were very hot, the nights were often excessively cold, and I have often known the thermometer sink from 90° at 1.30 p.m. to 45° or lower by 11 p.m.
I had a talk with Mosconas about slavery, and learnt very conclusively that it exists pretty openly in this part of the Soudan. He informed me that the woman (his servant) who had just brought us two small cups of coffee was a slave, one of a dozen owned by an Arab woman, and she realized a living by letting them out on hire. He paid three dollars per month for the hire of this slave. He also told me that Georgie Bey, an Arab Army doctor, who left Kassala for Khartoum the day before our arrival, sold two of his slaves before he went. This Georgie Bey was since killed with Hicks Pasha’s army near Souâkin.