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Updated: May 17, 2025
It was during that interval that the officers of the expedition had fraternized with the White Nile traders who resided at Khartoum. The result of such intimacy might be imagined. The object of the expedition had always been distasteful to both officers and men. The traders had already seen by the, examples made at Tewfikeeyah that I should actually destroy their cherished slave-trade.
Gedge, my chief medical officer at Tewfikeeyah, added to the retirement of one of the Egyptian surgeons from Gondokoro, had left me with so weak a medical staff that I had been unable to take a doctor from head-quarters. I therefore was compelled to perform all necessary operations myself, and to attend personally upon the wounded men.
The working representative of Achmet Sheik Agad was his son-in-law a man named Abou Saood: I had seen this person when at Tewfikeeyah; he had arrived in charge of several vessels from Gondokoro during the rainy season, when the flooded river and strong south wind had allowed the passage of his boats.
At that time he had no slaves on board, but I subsequently discovered that upon hearing that I had formed a station near the Soba, he had discharged a large cargo of slaves at the station of Kutchuk Ali on the Bahr Giraffe, so as to pass Tewfikeeyah in a state of innocence and purity, and thus save the confiscation of his ivory.
There was an old blind sheik who frequently visited us from the other side, and this poor old fellow came to an untimely end when returning one day with his son from marketing at Tewfikeeyah. I was walking on the quay, when I heard a great commotion, and I saw a splashing in the river, the surface of which was covered with the ambatch fragments of a native canoe.
My eyes had evidently been filled with Khartoum dust, for it was only now upon my return from Tewfikeeyah that I discovered that which should have been made known to me upon my first arrival from Cairo to command the expedition. It was the trader and lessee, Achmet Sheik Agad, who had applied to Mr. Higginbotham as a mediator, and he stated clearly a case of great hardship.
In 1870, while I was camped at Tewfikeeyah, I entirely suppressed the river traffic; but the fact of my leaving over-taken three vessels with 700 slaves belonging to Abou Saood at the close of the expedition, on my return towards Khartoum, must be a damning proof of complicity on the part of certain government officials.
We steamed thirteen hours from Tewfikeeyah, with the tender and diahbeeah in tow, and reached the old sudd about twelve miles beyond the Bahr Giraffe junction. The water below the sudd was quite clear from floating vegetation, as it had been filtered through this extraordinary obstruction. I will not fatigue the reader by a description of this voyage. We were as usual in a chaos of marshes.
The mean temperature at the station of Tewfikeeyah had been: In the month of May, at 6 a.m. 73 degrees Fahrenheit " at Noon 92 degrees " " June, at 6 a.m. 72 degrees " " at Noon 86 degrees " " July, at 6 a.m. 71 degrees " " at Noon 81 degrees " During May we had heavy rain during 3 days. " " light " " 4 " 7 days. During June we had heavy rain during 5 days.
We had sent little Mostoora to the care of Djiaffer Pacha at Khartoum to be educated, before we left Tewfikeeyah. That clever little creature had learnt English and Arabic sufficiently to converse, and although not far removed from infancy, she was more intelligent than any of the adults. She was much too young for a long voyage . . . Everything was ready for the start.
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