allowed by the Treasury for Zobeir's housekeeping and other expenses, to forward and receive his correspondence through defined authorities, to attend to his wishes, so far as might be, and (upon this Sir John Adye, the Governor, laid a particular stress to me) to try to observe such friendly relations as might mitigate a banishment from home and kindred. I happened to be quartered at Gibraltar with the 3rd Battalion Rifle Brigade at the time, and early in December 1885 I took over these duties, which I resigned on the 10th of March 1886, when I went home on leave. Thus for three months I saw a great deal of Zobeir Pasha.

At first Zobeir used only to tell me of the moving adventures of his old life in the Bahr-el-Ghazal; but as we came to know each other better we used to talk of the Soudan, of General Gordon, of the Mahdi, of the slave trade, of the Cairo pashas, of revenue duties and taxation, and even of Home Rule, which, in a feverish form, was then agitating everybody in England. These conversations were both serious and animated, and were carried on through an interpreter, by name Hamed. Hamed was at this time an oldish man, but his beard, as he often told me, grew in the Zoological Gardens. He had come to England as the personal escort and attendant of the first hippopotamus which visited our shores, and he had learned English in a school in the Borough Road. He may often have heightened the stories of the wild men and the wild beasts of the Bahr-el-Ghazal and Darfur days; but once the conversation touched upon the state of affairs and of feeling in the Soudan, Hamed did his utmost to catch the exact and innermost sense of what he had to translate. Of that I have no doubt. A town Arab from Dongola, he always wore the dress of his people. The slave question interested him specially, and, imperturbable as he usually was, so excited did he become over it one day that he dashed his turban half off his head. An Oriental who takes liberties with his headgear is really moved.

As I have just said, it is, of course, difficult to know whether an interpreter is telling one what he has been told to tell, or whether in the telling he has not been instructed to make reserves, and leave loopholes, or merely to reply in platitudes or compliments. This has been common knowledge since Mr. Kinglake enriched our literature with Eothen. We all know, too, that the latter method is all but an art in the East; and long and full, and easy and frequent as my intercourse with Zobeir Pasha became-especially during the last month or two of my suzerainship-Hamed to the last usually prefaced the more earnest allocutions of the Pasha with 'Pasha says many compliments to yourself and your family,' or 'Pasha says how is your health,' or 'Pasha hopes God '-or, as he always pronounced it, Gard' always protect you.' But when we were on Gordon and Khartoum and slave dealing, and its sanctions by the religion of Islam, or talking of Suleiman and Gessi, there was no doubt in my

mind that both the Pasha and his interpreter were out and out in earnest the former to get his views clearly and concisely conveyed, and the latter to so convey them.

Of course, I do not for a moment imagine that this was due to Zobeir's desire to go fully into all these matters with me, or with anybody else, merely for the sake of talking; at the back of his mind there existed the hope that I might be of some use to him; that the full presentation of his case in London to great personages, with whom he fancied I was in familiar and easy touch, would lead to its being reconsidered, and to his return, if not to Khartoum, at all events to Cairo, possibly in some position of responsibility—or, at all events, as a free agent; and lastly to the satisfaction of a money claim—I think of something like 70,000l.-which he had against the Egyptian Government for services rendered by him in the conquest of Darfur, and at other times.

Early in 1885 Zobeir Pasha was deported to Gibraltar from Alexandria. According to his own account, he had gone thither on a visit, to clear up some matter of acute controversy in the sacred writings with a noted Koran pundit. Whilst he was away his letters, papers and correspondence were seized in his house at Cairo. Rumour whispered at the time that the result of this coup de main was disappointing, and that nothing very compromising was found. But, anyhow, Zobeir was deported as a prisoner to Gibraltar, the authority for his detention, as explained in the House of Commons, being an Order in Council of that colony (Gibraltar), and no public investigation or trial of his case was held, although he had asked for it more than once himself.

Discounting the obvious uncertainty of his position, and allowing for that longing for a settled domestic life which has distinguished the elderly and patriarchal Oriental since Abraham dwelt under the oaks of Mamre, Zobeir was wonderfully contented. Indeed, when he used to say to me, touching his forehead, that to govern was very difficult, but that all Governments were alike in all the world, and must have allowances made for them; that he knew he must be patient and wait-Something,' he said, 'is working in their minds '— there was something almost childlike about this acquiescence. He never, or seldom, laughed, but if he was in good spirits, which depended much upon the weather and the amount of sunshine, I felt him to be cheerful. Within the precincts of the cottage he enjoyed the necessaries, and some of the luxuries, of life. If during the winter he often regretted a warmer sunshine, he appreciated English grates and English coal; anxieties which oppressed him at first as to the welfare of a helpless concourse of wives and children at Cairo had been removed, and his letters home, as he himself assured me, breathed something of the spirit of one of the few examples I remember in the Latin Grammar: 'Si tu et Tullia valetis, ego

et

Cicero valemus.' On fine days he was sanguine about the possibilities of his being made use of, and of being of use, and was fertile in plans and suggestions.

On the other hand, the grey, lashing rains and blurred horizons, with which all who have been quartered on the Rock are familiar, had the opposite effect. He would then become very downcast about everything. I think it was in February that we had a longish spell of this kind of weather-heavy winds driving the seas high and ceaselessly against the scarped cliffs, the spray salting his sitting-room windows; and he told me one afternoon that I was to pay no further attention to anything he said—that he could not have saved, or helped, Mr. Gordon,' as we always styled him, that he had been too long away from Khartoum, that other men had taken his place, and so on. However, the despondency vanished with a few halcyon days, which were the recompense for these discontents.

At this time his residence at Gibraltar was costing this country upwards of 150l. a month, and it was said by persons whose opinions at the time were held to be valuable that it was cheap at the money. At the same time, to arrest and to detain a man unheard and untried was admittedly an arbitrary act, and a considerable degree of necessity was required to justify it. One of the securities which were always claimed to accrue to the world at large when Mr. Gladstone was at the head of affairs was that the rights of weak and small nationalities were certain to be respected, and that the citizens of other countries would be treated with the same consideration as our own. Precedents for the detention of a subject of a friendly and civilised nation without even the form of a trial or investigation having taken place were not of a kind which could be profitably cited by Liberal statesmen. Quite recently, indeed, Arabi Pasha, though a rebel, and known to be so by overt acts committed in the presence of thousands, was granted all the ceremonials of a State trial and was assisted by able English counsel. A question which many people at Gibraltar asked themselves at the time was, Why had not the same justice been accorded to Zobeir? It was difficult not to believe that the reason was that proof was known to exist in the case of Arabi, and that no proof, but only suspicion and unpopular antecedents, could be adduced against Zobeir.

However, I pass from that. Zobeir himself always traced the general rising in the Soudan to alarm and misconception of British intentions-alarm and misconception which Zobeir thought were mainly responsible for General Gordon's assassination. I took the words down in writing as spoken, and I have my notes before me:

When Gordon returned to Khartoum the people of the Soudan were pleased. They knew he would not allow unjust taxes or unjust duties, or oppress trade and poor men. Khartoum became quiet when he arrived. Many Arab Sheikhs came into Khartoum to hear what was in Gordon's mind. Then came news of English and Egyptian soldiers at Suakin. The people of Khartoum began to fancy that Gordon had come to deceive them; that this time he

was the servant of the English; that he was going to keep Khartoum quiet while the English troops fought with Osman Digna. This distrust of Gordon increased when they heard that Zobeir Pasha's promised coming was no true promise. Instead came tidings of a stranger people in arms, who were going to sweep away the Arab and his religion. The sheikhs all left Khartoum for their own people, and the Soudan rose. The rising had nothing to do with the Mahdi at first, but the rising was for the sake of religion. The Mahdi was said to be a holy man and the leader of a war of religion, and so they joined him.

Mr. Sidney Low, in an interesting article in the April number which is mainly responsible for this paper and for these recollections of mine, tells us that Zobeir Pasha was not a slave dealer, and that Zobeir had himself assured him that this was quite a mistake. Perhaps not-to the extent that the chairman of the Army and Navy Stores is not a grocer or a gunmaker or that a director of a gold mine is not a pick-and-shovel miner. But there can be little doubt that Zobeir regulated and protected and policed, and indirectly financed, the slave trade in the Equatorial Provinces; that his settlement-Dem-Zobeir-was, as it were, the metropolis and the clearing house of the slave industry in that part of the world; that the considerable revenue he administered during the years of his power and rule in the Soudan was mainly levied on duties of different kinds and degree imposed upon the slave dealers and caravans-Arab and Egyptian alike; and that his influence was due to his aptitude in systematising a common and lucrative interest.

Zobeir was always in favour of a conference being held at Cairo between representatives of the Porte and of the English Government on the slave-trade question. But at this time-March 1886he held that nothing should be said about it. To quote his own words: The slave question is closely bound up with the two causes of the revolt(1) money, (2) religion.

Taking away the slaves is associated with money-stopping the trade with religion. For instance, Reuf Pasha had slaves taken away from him by force, and many others, the owners not only not being compensated, but being thrown into prison. To get out they had to pay ransom. As to the second matterreligion-by the Mohammedan religion slaves are allowed; their position is laid down by the Koran, so Trade allowed.

Later on you (the English) may be able by degrees to do away with the present custom-but these at present are looked upon as sacred and as belonging to religion. Then will have to be paid much compensation, and a fixed labour wage will have to be fixed throughout the districts.

No doubt he was a large trader in other things-in ivory, gums, ostrich feathers, gold dust, precious stones, and, I think, rubber and hides to a small extent; but the pulse of the machine was the slave trade.

This view is borne out by the literature on the subject, which, though limited, is reliable and vivid. Take, for instance, all the Gordon and Gessi books, Dr. Schweinfurth's Heart of Africa, and the excellent War Office Report on the Soudan Provinces (1884), largely written, if I remember rightly, by the present Sirdar, Sir R. Wingate.

There are a few other books which I read at Gibraltar at the time, but which, writing here at Rapallo, I cannot cite with any accurate recollection. Dr. Schweinfurth gives a description of his stay at Dem-Zobeir in the Bahr-el-Ghazal, where he renewed his equipment and supplies, made the acquaintance of the Pasha, and was able to purchase a much-needed pair of boots, lucifers, tobacco, and cartridge paper for drying his botanical specimens. After a graphic account of the slave dealers' quarters and ways, Dr. Schweinfurth writes:

Zobeir had surrounded himself with a Court that was little less than princely in its details. A group of large well-built, square huts, enclosed by tall hedges, composed the private residence; within these were various State apartments, before which armed sentries kept guard by day and night. Special rooms provided with carpeted divans were reserved as antechambers, and into these all visitors were conducted by richly dressed slaves, who served them with coffee, sherbet and tchibouks. The regal aspect of these halls of state was increased by the introduction of some lions, secured, as may be supposed, by 'sufficiently strong massive chains. Behind a large curtain in the innermost hut was placed the invalid couch of Zobeir. Attendants were close at hand to attend to his wants, and a company of fakirs sat on the divans outside the curtain and murmured their never-ending prayers.2

At this time--January 1871-the number of slave dealers drawing corn from Zobeir's stores and depending upon him for supplies amounted to 2,700.3 Zobeir was interested in direct trade as well as in its relation to revenue and economics, but he had the grand style in these matters. For instance, I never heard him ask the price of anything-not even of a horse, which pained me in an Arab. But he constantly asked questions about revenue and taxation and customs, not only in Gibraltar, but in England. Possibly a whole-hogger at heart, I fancy that the nicer discriminations of Mr. A. J. Balfour would have been more to his mind, and would have accorded more nearly with his own notions of fiscal policy. But this is an unseasonable digression.

I never remember his making any critical or other comment upon the fortifications of Gibraltar, or upon the Army or the Navy, and the Ministers whom it would have interested him most to meet would have been the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the President of the Board of Trade. Yet I remember one afternoon telling him a little about the Home Rule controversies at issue, and I asked him what he thought about the subject. He put both his hands together, with the palms upwards, and Hamed said, 'Pasha say, when like that can drink'; he then separated them, and Hamed said, 'When like that cannot drink.' The Pasha was himself much pleased at this figure.

To return, however, for a moment to the Army and Navy and fortifications considerations, a combination of these three things led

2 Heart of Africa, London, 1874.

Gossi, Seven Years in the Soudan, eh. xxxiii. London, 1892.