All of these people had been greatly exasperated by the slave-traders and by the garrison left at Gondokoro by Baker. The policy of the slave-traders had been to keep one tribe at war with another, and by allying themselves with one and the other to get much of the fighting done for them and to carry off the spoils in slaves, cattle and ivory. The Egyptian garrison had imitated the traders, and when Gordon went up it was practically besieged at Gondokoro. In two years and a half Gordon had reduced the garrison at Gondokoro to a sergeant and ten men, and his strongest garrison, that at Moogi, was but 90 men. He had established stations for 300 miles at a day’s march, or less, apart, and over much of this distance one courier could pass unharmed. The chiefs about the stations paid tribute of corn and furnished porters readily. On the Albert Lake he put a steamer and two large iron life-boats, which traversed without danger or difficulty the 125 miles of river south of Dufli. The Moogi family, for some distance on the east bank of the river, was still hostile, but all the other river people had great confidence in the wonderful white man who had been just and truthful with them. How much of this condition still exists I do not know, but the fact that it did exist in 1877 shows what missionaries might hope to do there.
The negroes of the far Nile country, like the Shillooks, the Dinkas, and the Nouers below, breed cattle, raise their poor breadstuffs and a few vegetables, and hunt but little. Were it not for the tribal wars, they would seldom suffer for food, although local famines from drought do occur. Like the negroes farther down the Nile, they are, too, a simple and happy people, only asking to be let alone. They want nothing that our civilization can give them except bright beads and wire. Therefore, to establish relations of trade with them is not easy.
I began by promising to give you somewhat accurate notions of certain limited regions. I find that I have been able to skim but hastily over even the area to which I have confined myself.
I will conclude with a few words about that area as a missionary field. I need not tell you that the poor people are densely ignorant of Christianity, as they are of all religion. I need not tell you again that like all savages they make each other as miserable as they can with their poor knowledge of the art and means of war; or that the slave-traders and the Khedive’s troops are adding daily to their capacity in that way. I hardly need tell you that I believe them to be human beings whose happiness might be increased by teaching them peaceful industries and by inducing them to give up idleness and fighting. In short, there is no doubt that the condition of the people of Central Africa and the Soudan is deplorable, and there is a possibility that Christian missionaries might make it better. The question is how and where you can do the most with the means at your command. Probably the most can be done by working steadily up the Nile, and to moderate distances east and west of the water-way, with a base in the more healthful regions of the north, and a steamer to carry people back and forth. I believe it would be a mistake to plant an isolated mission anywhere south of the swamp region. The essential thing is to be able to take a man away as soon as you find that he can no longer resist the fevers, recruit him in the desert air, and then hurry him back before he and his people have forgotten each other. If you plant a colony in the heart of Africa and leave it for three years, at the end of that time there will probably not be a man of it living—almost certainly he will not be living and working there. But it will take an ordinary man at least three years to fit himself for really good work amongst a people whose language and ways are so new to him.