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Updated: May 9, 2025
The Shilluk, an African tribe, inhabit the banks of the White Nile, their territory extending on the west bank from Kaka in the north, to Lake No in the south, on the east bank from Fashoda to Taufikia, and some 35 miles up the Sohat river. Numbering some 40,000 in all, they are a pastoral people, their wealth consisting in flocks and herds, grain and millet.
On the 8th the Sirdar started up the White Nile for Fashoda with five steamers, the XIth and XIIIth Battalions of Soudanese, two companies of the Cameron Highlanders, Peake's battery of artillery, and four Maxim guns. Three days later he arrived at Reng, and there found, as the crew of the Tewfikia had declared, some 500 Dervishes encamped on the bank, and the Safia steamer moored to it.
The banks were accessible, and a landing of the troops was much more easily effected than had been the case at Fashoda. As soon as the soldiers and the two remaining guns of Captain Peake's battery were got ashore, the Egyptian flag was formally hoisted and greeted. It was the Sirdar who directed the whole proceedings.
This had formerly been the Dinka country, but it had been quite depopulated by razzias made for slaves by the former and present governors of Fashoda. These raids had been made on a large scale, with several thousand troops, in addition to the sharp slave-hunters, the Baggara Arabs, as allies. The result was almost the extermination of the Dinka tribe.
I simply depended upon the personal support of the Khedive, whose sincerity I never doubted; thus I acted as I firmly believed the Khedive would have desired me to act under the circumstances. The Khedive proved that my confidence in his sincerity was well founded. He at once dismissed from his service and disgraced the governor of Fashoda. These facts cast shadows of coming events.
One day Abou Saoud brought him some letters written by a party of slave-dealers to the Egyptian governor of Fashoda, on the White Nile, half-way to Khartoum, saying that they would shortly arrive with a gang of negroes whom they had captured, and with two thousand cows, which they had also kidnapped, as was their custom.
Later on the civilized nations will know more, and will wonder and laugh together at their old blindness. When Lord Kitchener went down the line, before the march past, they say that he stopped to speak to a General who had been Marchand's Chief of Staff at the time of Fashoda.
I did not quite see that obedience to such orders was absolutely necessary, as the slave trade had been similarly prohibited by proclamation in the reign of the late Said Pacha, but with no permanent effect. There were two fine steamers lying at Fashoda, which had formed a portion of the fleet of six steamers that I had sent up from Cairo some years ago to tow my flotilla up the White Nile.
This rivalry produced acute friction, which grew in intensity until it reached its culminating point in the crisis of Fashoda in 1898, and was not removed until the settlement of 1904 solved all the outstanding difficulties. It would be quite untrue to say that Britain deliberately endeavoured to prevent or to check the rapid colonial expansion of France.
Although I had heard that this governor had amassed a considerable fortune by the establishment of a toll per head for every slave that passed Fashoda, I imagined that he would this year make up his mind that the rich harvest was over.
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