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No greater proof could be given of the insincerity of the Soudan authorities in professing to suppress the slave trade, than the fact that Djiaffer Pacha, the governor-general of the Soudan, had given the command of an expedition to this same Kutchuk Ali, who was known as one of the principal slave-traders of the White Nile. "April 14. One of my black soldiers deserted, but was captured.
When at length they did arrive, they had been THIRTEEN MONTHS on the voyage to Gondokoro, and had passed the rainy season with the slave-traders in the camp of Kutchuk Ali on the Bahr Giraffe; this river they reported as navigable, owing to my canals, which had continued open. It was the old story of delay and indolence, unless I was personally present to force them forward.
Several expeditions were sent against him, but he always succeeded in bribing the commanders, who, on their return to Constantinople, made such representations that Kutchuk Ali, instead of being punished, received one dignity after another, until finally he attained the rank of a Pasha of two tails.
Arrived at Kutchuk Ali's station at 10.30 A.M., and took in wood. The country is all flooded, and both the natives and the traders are without corn, the crops having been destroyed by the extraordinary rise of the river. The people have no other grain than the scanty supply yielded by the seeds of the lotus, which they collect from the river.
On board the diahbeeah of Kutchuk Ali were four musicians, natives of Pongo, on the river Djoor. Their band consisted of two iron bells, a flageolet and an instrument made of hard wood that was arranged like the musical glasses of Europe. The latter was formed of ten pieces of a metallic sounding-wood suspended above long narrow gourd shells.
In 1770, a Russian fleet appeared for the first time in the Mediterranean, and the Turkish navy was destroyed at Chesme. By the treaty of Kutchuk Kainardji , Turkey was obliged to recognize the independence of the Crimea, and cede to Russia a considerable amount of territory. In 1783, Russia gained the Crimea, and in 1793, by the last partition of Poland, a very large portion of that country.
However, now that I had arrived, things began to move a little faster. I find this entry in my journal, dated "1st October, 1870. Thermometer, 6 a.m., 80 degrees; noon, 94 degrees. Wind, north. The fact of my having captured the boats of Kutchuk Ali and Agad with slaves on board, has determined a passive, but stubborn, resistance in Khartoum to the expedition. This is shared by the officials.
We shall therefore arrive to-day at about 4 P.M. We have been exactly 19 1/2 hours steaming from Kutchuk Ali's station to the ambatch. We left Tewfikeeyah at 11 o'clock; we have therefore been twenty-seven days to the spot at the dubba that we should reach this evening. Last year we left Khartoum on 8th February, and we arrived at the station in the following order:
I gave one of them a cigar, which he was at a loss how to smoke, until our muleteer showed him. Baias was celebrated fifty years ago, as the residence of the robber chief, Kutchuk Ali, who, for a long time, braved the authority of the Porte itself.
The people of Kutchuk Ali, on the Bahr Giraffe, were under the impression that we had returned direct to Khartoum. I was rather curious to know whether they would presume to send slaves down the White Nile during this season, knowing that the Khedive had sent me expressly to suppress the trade.
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