He conveyed a large steamer up the Nile as far as Lake Albert
Nyanza, and succeeded in floating her safely on the waters of that
inland sea. He had established posts all the way from Khartoum to
Gondokora, and reduced that enormous journey from fifteen months to only
a few weeks. He writes respecting these posts in January, 1879: "I am
putting in all the frontier posts European Vakeels, to see that no slave
caravans come through the frontier. I do not think that any now try to
pass; but the least neglect of vigilance would bring it on again in no
time."
This is only one out of hundreds of instances of the hawk-eyed vigilance
of the governor-general. The vast provinces under his sway had never
been ruled in this fashion before.
One strain runs through all his numerous letters written during the five
years he remained in the Soudan, and that is the heart-rending condition
of the thousands of slaves who were driven through the country, and the
cruelty of the slave-hunters. Were we to begin quoting from those
letters, we should outrun the limits of this sketch. He had broken the
neck of the piratical army of man-stealers, and their forces were
scattered and comparatively powerless. So many slaves were set free that
they became a serious inconvenience, as they had to be fed and provided
for.
And yet there was no shout of joy at the capital, whence he had set out
years before, armed with the firman of the khedive to put an end to the
slave trade.
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