Difficulties were met with from the very beginning. The vessel’s yards were continually being carried away.
Poor Johann, who, though he had long been suffering, insisted on accompanying his employer, died a short time after the commencement of the voyage.
On the 2nd of January they were sailing past the country inhabited by the Shillooks, the largest and most powerful black tribe on the banks of the White Nile. They are very wealthy, and possess immense herds of cattle; are also agriculturists, fishermen, and warriors. Their huts are regularly built, looking at a distance like rows of button mushrooms. They embark boldly on the river in their raft-like canoes, formed of the excessively light ambatch-wood. The tree is of no great thickness, and tapers gradually to a point. It is
thus easily cut down, and, several trunks being lashed together, a canoe is quickly formed. A war party on several occasions, embarking in a fleet of these rafts, have descended the river, and made raids on other tribes, carrying off women and children as captives, and large herds of cattle.
Nothing can be more melancholy and uninteresting than the general appearance of the banks of the river. At times vast marshes alone could be seen, at others an immense expanse of sandy desert, with huge ant-hills ten feet high rising above them. The inhabitants were naked savages. While stopping at a village on the right bank, they received a visit from the chief of the Nuehr tribe and a number of his followers. They were most unearthly-looking fellows; even the young women were destitute of clothing, though the married had a fringe made of grass round their loins. The men wore heavy coils of beads about their necks, two heavy bracelets of ivory on the upper portions of their arms, copper rings upon the wrist, and a horrible kind of bracelet of massive iron, armed with spikes about an inch in length, like leopards’ claws. The women had their upper lips perforated and wore ornaments on their heads, about four inches long, of beads, upon iron wires projecting like the horn of a rhinoceros.
The chief exhibited his wife’s arms and back, covered with jagged scars, to show the use of the spiked iron bracelet.
These were among the first blacks met with. They are almost too low in the scale of humanity to be fit for slaves. Mr Baker gained much information about the slave trade of this part of the world. Most of those engaged in this nefarious traffic are Syrians, Copts, Turks, Circassians, and some few Europeans. When a speculator has determined to enter into the trade, he engages a hundred and fifty to two hundred ruffians, and purchases guns and ammunition, and a few pounds of glass beads. With these he sails up to Gondokoro and, disembarking, marches into the interior till he arrives at the village of some negro chief, with whom he establishes an intimacy. The chief has probably an enemy to attack, and his new allies gladly assist him. Led by him, they approach some unsuspecting village about half an hour before daybreak. Surrounding it while the occupants are still sleeping, they fire the grass-huts in all directions, and pour volleys of musketry through the flaming thatch. Panic-struck, the unfortunate victims rush from their burning dwellings. The men are shot down, the women and children kidnapped and secured, while the herds of cattle are driven off. The women and children are then fastened together, the former secured by an instrument, called a sheba, made of a forked pole. The neck of the prisoner fits into the fork, secured by a cross-piece also behind, while the wrists, brought together in advance of the body, are tied to the pole. The children are then fastened by their necks with the rope attached to the women, and thus form a living chain, in which order they are marched to the head-quarters with the captured herds. Of course, all the ivory found in the place is carried off. The cattle are then exchanged with the negro chief for any tusks he may possess.
In many instances a quarrel is soon afterwards picked with him, and his village is treated in the same way as that of his foes. Should any slave attempt to escape, she is punished either by brutal flogging, or hanged as a warning to others. The slaves are then carried down the river, and landed a few days’ journey south of Khartoum, whence they are marched across the country, some to ports on the Red Sea, there to be shipped for Arabia and Persia, while others are sent to Cairo. In fact, they are disseminated throughout the slave dealing East.
Sailing on day after day, with marshes and dead flats alone