A man without means forms an expedition, and borrows money for this
purpose at 100 percent after this fashion. He agrees to repay the lender
in ivory at one-half its market value. Having obtained the required sum,
he hires several vessels and engages from 100 to 300 men, composed of
Arabs and runaway villains from distant countries, who have found an
asylum from justice in the obscurity of Khartoum. He purchases guns and
large quantities of ammunition for his men, together with a few hundred
pounds of glass beads. The piratical expedition being complete, he pays
his men five months' wages in advance, at the rate of forty-five
piastres (nine shillings) per month, and he agrees to give them eighty
piastres per month for any period exceeding the five months advanced.
His men receive their advance partly in cash and partly in cotton stuffs
for clothes at an exorbitant price. Every man has a strip of paper, upon
which is written by the clerk of the expedition the amount he has
received both in goods and money, and this paper he must produce at the
final settlement.
The vessels sail about December, and on arrival at the desired locality,
the party disembark and proceed into the interior, until they arrive at
the village of some negro chief, with whom they establish an intimacy.
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