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The khedive, too, failed to support him, and Gordon, seeing it was hopeless to expect to gain his point, and depressed and annoyed with what had taken place, returned to Khartoum by way of the Suez Canal and Suakim. Then came the news that Suleiman had revolted, and had overrun the province of Bahr-el-Ghazal on the south of Darfour.
Heughlin, in the true scientific spirit, industriously explored the banks of the Bahr-el-Ghazal, Alexina Tinné was preparing to join him, and was bringing all her energy to bear upon the difficulties that impeded her. When only a few miles from Khartûm, her captain came to tell her, with signs of the greatest alarm, that the steamer was leaking and must shortly sink.
On their arrival, a cordon was drawn round the panther, and it was easily captured. On the 7th of July, the steamer, heavily laden and towing two boats, continued its course up the river. Between the Jebel Hunaya and the point where the Bahr-el-Ghazal flows into the White Nile, the scenery is of a very unattractive character, and the river-banks are parched and unfruitful.
After long discussions the Cabinet of London agreed to the convention of May 12, 1894, whereby the Congo State gained the Bahr-el-Ghazal basin and the left bank of the Upper Nile, together with a port on the Albert Nyanza. On his side, King Leopold recognised the claims of England to the right bank of the Nile and to a strip of land between the Albert Nyanza and Lake Tanganyika.
It stated that he had arrived at Fashoda on July 10, having been instructed by his Government to occupy the Bahr-el-Ghazal up to the confluence of the Bahr-el-Jebel, and also the Shilluk country on the left bank of the White Nile as far as Fashoda.
This was too good an opportunity to be neglected: the boatmen immediately attacked the ill-fated animal, killed it, and cut it in pieces. On the 10th of March the ladies steamed into the port of Meschra-el-Rey, in the Bahr-el-Ghazal, and joined Dr. Heughlin. They were received with great enthusiasm flags flying and guns firing.
For many years the Arab slave-traders had been extending their raids in easterly and south-easterly directions, until they began to desolate the parts of the Congo State nearest to the great lakes and the Bahr-el-Ghazal. Their activity may be ascribed to the following causes. The slave-trade has for generations been pursued in Africa.
A lake, nearly as large as the Victoria Nyanza, once covered the marshy plain where the Bahr-el-Abiad unites with the Sobat and with the Bahr-el-Ghazal.
Far away in Egypt, prince, priest, and peasant look southwards with anxious attention for the fluctuating yet certain rise. Gradually the flood begins. The Bahr-el-Ghazal from a channel of stagnant pools and marshes becomes a broad and navigable stream. The Sobat and the Atbara from dry watercourses with occasional pools, in which the fish and crocodiles are crowded, turn to rushing rivers.
England undertook to lease the Bahr-el-Ghazal in consideration of the lease from him of a strip fifteen and a half miles wide along the eastern border of the state, in order to make possible the scheme of a railway on land under British control from "the Cape to Cairo." This scheme was defeated by the Germans as well as by the French.
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