His principal work was to conquer the insurgent slave-dealers
who had taken possession of the country and enslaved the inhabitants.
The lands south of Khartoum had long been occupied by European traders,
who dealt in ivory, and had thus "opened up the country." This opening
up was a terrible scourge to the natives, because these European
traffickers soon began to find out that "black ivory" was more valuable
than white. So they formed fortified posts, called sceribas, and
garrisoned them with Arab ruffians, who harried the country and
organized manhunts on a gigantic scale. The profits were enormous, but
the "bitter cry" of Africa began to make itself heard in distant Europe,
and the so-called Christian slave-dealers found it more prudent to
withdraw. This they did without loss, for they sold their stations to
Arabs, and the trade in human beings went on as merrily as ever. Dr.
Schweinfurth, the African explorer and botanist, visited one of these
slave-dealing princes in 1871, and found him surrounded by an almost
regal court, and possessed of more than vice-regal power. He was lord of
thirty stations, all strongly fortified, and stretching like a chain
into the very heart of Africa. Thus his armies of fierce soldiery, Arab
and black, were able to make raids over whole provinces, and gather in
the great human harvest to supply the demands of Egypt, Turkey, and
Arabia. This famous man was named Sebehr Rahma; and although he was
defeated by Colonel Gordon and sent down to Cairo, he never quite lost
favor at the Egyptian Court, and was not long since appointed commander
in chief of the Soudan, to uphold the power of Egypt against the Mahdi!
The scandals of the slave-trade, combined with the lust of conquest,
were the causes out of which grew the famous expedition of Sir Samuel
Baker to the Soudan.
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