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When, therefore, we read that Ismail, at the instance
of the Prince of Wales, took effective measures for stop-
ping the slave trade down the Nile, and for stopping
slave raids in the Sudan, we realise that he was making
considerable sacrifices and taking some risks in order
to establish Egypt and himself as enlightened and
Europeanised. It is true that Sir Samuel Baker, whom
he sent to the Sudan for this purpose (1869-1873), could
only make a beginning by extending Egyptian authority
up to Gondokoro, and by establishing posts on the
Upper Nile. But Gordon, who followed, penetrated
Uganda and asserted a real authority over the Sudan.
As Governor-General at Khartum, with Lupton Bey in
Bahr-el-Ghazal, Slatin at Darfur, and Emin (Schnitzler)
in Equatoria, he slowly but surely repressed both slave
raiding and slave trading. The most powerful of the
slave traders, Zobeir, who had made himself ruler of
Darfur (1875), was first flattered by being made Pasha,
then lured to Cairo and imprisoned. His son, Suleiman,
rose, but Gordon defeated and killed him (1879). The
Abyssinians, resenting resistance to their slave raids,
invaded Massowa, but were repulsed. A counter-invasion
of Abyssinia, though it resulted in a serious disaster to
the Egyptian expedition, yet checked Abyssinian slaving
,as it has not been checked before or since. But even the
daemonic energy of Gordon could do no more than slowly
drive the traders off the main routes to the north and
the raiders into the remoter regions of the south. Slavery
could only be killed by a more effective economic ex-
ploitation of the economic resources of the Sudan than
the hunting of slaves and elephants. White and black
ivory would remain the only exportable produce of the
region until better communications were provided than
the Upper Nile, with its cataracts and sudd. A rail-
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