abited by
the Shillooks, the largest and most powerful black tribe on the banks of
the White Nile. They are very wealthy, and possess immense herds of
cattle; are also agriculturists, fishermen, and warriors. Their huts
are regularly built, looking at a distance like rows of button
mushrooms. They embark boldly on the river in their raft-like canoes,
formed of the excessively light ambatch-wood. The tree is of no great
thickness, and tapers gradually to a point. It is thus easily cut down,
and, several trunks being lashed together, a canoe is quickly formed. A
war party on several occasions, embarking in a fleet of these rafts,
have descended the river, and made raids on other tribes, carrying off
women and children as captives, and large herds of cattle.

Nothing can be more melancholy and uninteresting than the general
appearance of the banks of the river. At times vast marshes alone could
be seen, at others an immense expanse of sandy desert, with huge
ant-hills ten feet high rising above them. The inhabitants were naked
savages. While stopping at a village on the right bank, they received a
visit from the chief of the Nuehr tribe and a number of his followers.
They were most unearthly-looking fellows; even the young women were
destitute of clothing, though the married had a fringe made of grass
round their loins. The men wore heavy coils of beads about their necks,
two heavy bracelets of ivory on the upper portions of their arms, copper
rings upon the wrist, and a horrible kind of bracelet of massive iron,
armed with spikes about an inch in length, like leopards' claws. The
women had their upper lips perforated and wore ornaments on their heads,
about four inches long, of beads, upon iron wires projecting like the
horn of a rhinoceros.

The chief exhibited his wife's arms and back, covered with jagged scars,
to show the use of the spiked iron bracelet.

These were among the first blacks met with. They are almost too low in
the scale of humanity to be fit for slaves. Mr Baker gained much
information about the slave trade of this part of the world. Most of
those engaged in this nefarious traffic are Syrians, Copts, Turks,
Circassians, and some few Europeans. When a speculator has determined
to enter into the trade, he engages a hundred and fifty to two hundred
ruffians, and purchases guns and ammunition, and a few pounds of glass
beads. With these he sails up to Gondokoro and, disembarking, marches