ks
running not a stroke of work was done. I really thought, at one time,
that I'd have to give up. But finally the army put down the row, and
after a couple of hundred of the ringleaders had been thrown into the
river peace was restored. But it cost me, first and last, fully three
thousand niggers, and set me back at least six months.

"Then came the so-called labor unions, and the strikes, and more
trouble. These labor unions were started by a couple of smart, yellow
niggers from Chaldea, one of them a sort of lay preacher, a fellow with
a lot of gab. Before I got wind of them, they had gone so far it was
almost impossible to squelch them. First I tried conciliation, but it
didn't work a bit. They made the craziest demands you ever heard of--a
holiday every six days, meat every day, no night work and regular houses
to live in. Some of them even had the effrontery to ask for money! Think
of it! Niggers asking for money! Finally, I had to order out the army
again and let some blood. But every time one was knocked over, I had to
get another one to take his place, and that meant sending the army up
the river, and more expense, and more devilish worry and nuisance.

"In my grandfather's time niggers were honest and faithful workmen. You
could take one fresh from the bush, teach him to handle a shovel or pull
a rope in a year or so, and after that he was worth almost as much as he
could eat. But the nigger of to-day isn't worth a damn. He never does an
honest day's work if he can help it, and he is forever wanting
something. Take these fellows I have now--mainly young bucks from around
the First Cataract. Here are niggers who never saw baker's bread or
butcher's meat until my men grabbed them. They lived there in the bush
like so many hyenas. They were ten days' march from a lemon. Well, now
they get first-class beef twice a week, good bread and all the fish they
can catch. They don't have to begin work until broad daylight, and they
lay off at dark. There is hardly one of them that hasn't got a psaltery,
or a harp, or some other musical instrument. If they want to dress up
and make believe they are Egyptians, I give them clothes. If one of them
is killed on the work, or by a stray lion, or in a fight, I have him
embalmed by my own embalmers and plant him like a man. If one of them
breaks a leg or loses an arm or gets too old to work, I turn him loose
without complaining, and he is free to go home if he wants to.

"But are