bearing all the marks of having once supported a prodigious ironsmelting and grain growing population, but which was now desolate as the wilderness and silent as the grave. Entries of this kind are frequent in his Journal: "Came through miles of villages all burned because the people refused a certain Abdullah lodgings. Abdullah admitted that he had no other reason for burning them than the unwillingness of the people to lodge him and his slaves without payment, with the certainty of getting their food stolen and their utensils destroyed."

"We rose on to another interesting ridge, having a great many villages burned by Salim Mokadam's people, since we passed them in our course north-west. They had slept on the ridge after we saw them, and next morning in their wantonness fired their lodgings, and set fire to houses and villages on their route as a sort of horrid Moslem Niger joke. Men are worse than beasts of prey, if indeed it is law. ful to call Zanzibar slaves inen. It is monstrous injustice to compare free Africans living under their own chiefs and laws, and cultivating their own free land, with what slaves afterwards become at Zanzibar and elsewhere."

Baker bears the same testimony to the desolating effects of the slave trade in the part of the continent over which he recently travelled and which he annexed to Egypt. He speaks of a country near the Equator which

"Though exceedingly rich in soil, is entirely uninhabited on one side of the river. This formerly had been the Dinka country, but it had been quite depopulated by razzias made for slaves by the former and present (Egyptian) governors of Fashoda. The raids are made on a large scale, with several thousand troops, in addition to sharp slave-hunters, the Baggara Arabs, as allies. The result was almost the extermination of the Dinka tribe. It seemed incomprehensible to Shillook natives that a government that had only lately made slave-hunting a profession should suddenly turn against the slave-hunters."

Of another place he says, "This beautiful district, that had formerly abounded in villages, had been depopulated by the slavehunters."

Whatever Egypt may do now for the suppression of the slave trade, that trade flourished in the parts of Africa which were previously under its protection. Of one of these parts Baker says,

"In a country blessed with the most productive soil and favourable climate, with a population estimated at above a million, the only step towards improvement, after seven years of Egyptian rule, is a system of plunder and massacre. Instead of peace, a series of intrigues have thrown the country into a state of hopeless anarchy. With a good government this fertile land might produce enormous wealth in the cultivation of corn and cotton."

The slave traders have in fact the whole country, we might almost say the whole continent, under their power, and can do very much as they please. How they use their power, which they owe in a great measure to their firearms, for which the natives have a salutary dread, is painfully exemplified in an incident related by Dr. Livingstone. In

the country of the Manyuema, on the banks of the Lualabu, markets are held in the towns once a week, but on different days, to allow the traders and inhabitants of the district to attend them. The women are the traders, and the markets are attended by from 1000 to 3000 people. The description of these markets gives a good idea of the character and condition of the people.

"The market is a busy scene-every one in dead earnest-little time is lost in greetings; vendors of fish run about with potsherds full of snails or small fishes, or young clarias capensis smoke dried and spitted on twigs, or other relishes, to exchange for cassava roots dried after being steeped for about three days in waterpotatoes, vegetables, or grain, bananas, flour, palm-oil, fowls, salt, pepper; each is intensely eager to barter for relishes, and makes strong assertions as to the goodness of everything. They deal fairly, and when any differences arise they are easily settled by the men interfering or pointing to me: they appeal to each other, and have a strong sense of natural justice. It is a scene of the finest natural acting imaginable. The eagerness with which all sorts of assertions are made the feager earnestness with which apparently all creation, above, around, and beneath, is called on to attest the truth of what they allege-and then the intense surprise and withering scorn cast on those who despise their goods. I could not understand the words that flowed from their glib tongues, but the gestures were too expressive to need interpretation."

It was at one of these markets, where about 1500 people were assembled, that a terrible tragedy was enacted, which shows the character of the Arab slave merchants, and perfect immunity with which they can slaughter the unoffending inhabitants.

"It was a hot sultry day, and when I went into the market I saw Adie and Manilla, and three of the men who had lately come with Dugumbé. I was surprised to see these three with their guns, and felt inclined to reprove them, as one of my men did, for bringing weapons into the market, when I saw one of the fellows haggling about a fowl, and seizing hold of it. Before I had got thirty yards out, the discharge of two guns in the middle of the crowd told me that slaughter had begun : crowds dashed off from the place, and threw down their wares in confusion, and ran. At the same time that the three opened fire on the mass of the people near the upper end of the market-place volleys were discharged from a party down near the creek on the panic-stricken women, who dashed at the canoes. There, some fifty or more, were jammed in the creek, and the men forgot their paddles in the terror that seized all. The canoes were not to be got out, for the creek was too small, for so many men and women wounded by the balls poured into them, and leaped and scrambled into the water, shrieking. A long line of heads in the river showed that great numbers struck out for an island a full mile off in going towards it they had to put the left shoulder to a current of about two miles an hour; if they had struck away diagonally to the opposite bank, the current would have aided them, and, though nearly three miles off, some would have gained land: as it was, the heads above water showed the long line of those that would inevitably perish.

"Shot after shot continued to be fired on the helpless and perishing. Some of the long line of heads disappeared quietly; whilst other poor creatures threw their arms high, as if appealing to the great Father above, and sank. One canoe took in as many as it could hold, and all paddled with hands and arms; three canoes, got out in haste, picked up sinking friends, till all went down together, and disappeared. One man in a long canoe, which could have held forty or fifty, had clearly lost his head; he had been out in the stream before the massacre began, and now paddled up the river nowhere, and never looked to the drowning. and by all the heads disappeared; some had turned down towards the bank, and

By

escaped. Dugumbé put people into one of the deserted vessels to save those in the water, and saved twenty-one, but one woman refused to be taken on board from thinking that she was to be made a slave of; she preferred the chance of life by swimming to the lot of a slave; the Bagenya women are expert in the water, as they are accustomed to dive for oysters, and those who went down the stream may have escaped, but the Arabs themselves estimated the loss of life at between 330 and 400 souls. The shooting party near the canoes were so reckless, they killed two of their own people; and a Banyamwezi follower, who got into a deserted canoe to plunder, fell into the water, went down, then came up again, and down to rise no more.

"My first impulse was to pistol the murderers, but Dugumbé protested against my getting into a blood-feud, and I was thankful afterwards that I took his advice. Two wretched Moslems asserted that the fire was done by the people of the English.' I asked one of them why he lied so, and he could utter no excuse -no other falsehood came to his aid as he stood abashed before me, and so telling him not to tell palpable falsehoods, I left him gaping.

"The slaughter was peculiarly atrocious, inasmuch as we have always heard that women coming to or from the market have never been known to be molested: even when two districts are engaged in actual hostilities, the women pass among us to market unmolested.' The people under Hassani began the superhuman wickedness of capture and pillage of all indiscriminately. Dugumbé promised to send over men to order Tagamsia's men to cease firing and burning villages; they remained over among the ruins, feasting on goats and fowls all night, and next day continued their infamous work till twenty-seven villages were destroyed. . . . As I write I hear the loud wails on the left bank over those who were there slain, ignorant of their many friends now in the depth of the Lualabu. O let Thy Kingdom come!"

What must be the condition of a country in which a scene of this atrocious character could be enacted without any power of resistance, or means of demanding reparation or inflicting punishment? The country is indeed, to a great extent, a slave-hunting field. The Arabs are also slave dealers, but it is probably because it is sometimes easier and cheaper to buy slaves than to hunt them down. What is the price of a slave in Central Africa? What does the native vendor of the slave receive for consenting to deprive a human being of his liberty, his home, and consigning him to a life of degradation and forced labour? Let our traveller answer.

"A poor old woman and child are among the captives, the boy, about three years old, seems a mother's pet. His feet are sore walking in the sun. He was offered for two fathoms and his mother for one fathom; he understood it all and cried bitterly, clinging to his mother. She had of course no power to help him: they were separated afterwards."

The editor, himself a traveller in Africa, adds: "This is an episode of everyday occurrence in the wake of the slave-dealer. Two fathoms mentioned as the price of the boy's lifee-more valuable of the twomeans four yards of unbleached calico, his mother was sold for two yards. The reader must not think that there are no lower prices-in the famines which succeed the slave-dealers' raids boys and girls are sometimes to be purchased for a few handfuls of maize.

These may seem exceptional cases, but it appears to give a fair

idea of the general price. Baker states that in one part of Africa a handsome girl may be purchased for thirteen English needles, and exchanged in another for an elephant's tusk that is worth £20 or £30. According to the statements of the slave dealers themselves, they cannot give much for their slaves. Dr. Livingstone met with an Arab party, and went to look at their stock of human beings.

"Eighty-five slaves were in a pen formed of Dura stalks. The majority were boys about eight or ten years of age, others were grown men and women. Nearly all were in the taming stick; a few of the young ones were in thongs, the thong passing round the neck of each. The owners pointed out the different slaves, and said that after feeding them and accounting for the losses on the way to the coast, they made but little by the trip (!) I suspect the gain is made by those who ship them to the ports of Arabia, for at Zanzibar most of the young slaves we saw went for about seven dollars a head."

It might be supposed that when human life is held so cheap, even at times by those to whom it should be most precious, separation from friends, and removal from home, complete and final as they are known to be, can produce no very intense sorrow. This, it appears, is not the Besides the physical sufferings which the wretched slaves endure, they experience, for a time at least, great mental anguish. On this subject Livingstone says:

case.

"The strangest disease I have seen in this country seems really to be brokenheartedness, and it attacks free men who have been captured and made slaves. My attention was drawn to it when the elder brother of Syde bin Habib was killed in Rua by a night attack, from a spear being pitched through his tent into his side. Syde then vowed vengeance for the blood of his brother, and assaulted all he could find, killing the elders and making the young men captives. He had secured a very large number, and they endured the chains until they saw the broad river Lualaba roll between them and their free homes; they then lost heart. Twenty-one were unchained as being now safe; however, all ran away at once; but eight, with many others still in chains, died in three days after crossing. They ascribed their only pain to the heart, and placed their hand correctly on the spot, though many think the organ stands high up under the breast bone. Some slavers expressed surprise to me that they should die, seeing they had plenty to eat and no work. One fine boy of about twelve years was carried, and when about to expire, was kindly laid down on the side of the path, and a hole dug to deposit the body in. He too said he had nothing the matter with him, except pain in his heart; as it attacks only the free (who are captured and never slaves), it seems to be really broken-hearts of which they die."

The editor here states Livingstone's servants give some additional particulars in answer to questions put to them about this dreadful history. The sufferings endured by these unfortunate captives, whilst they were hawked about in different directions, must have been shocking indeed; many died because it was impossible for them to carry a burden on the head whilst marching in the heavy yoke or "taming stick," which weighs from 30 lbs. to 40 lbs. as a rule, and the Arabs knew that if once the stick were taken off, the captive would escape

on the first opportunity. Children for a time would keep up with wonderful endurance, but it happened sometimes that the sound of dancing and the merry tinkle of the small drums would fall on their ears in passing near to a village; then the memory of home and happy days proved too much for them; they cried and sobbed, the "broken heart" came on, and they rapidly sank.

But after deducting from the slave camps those who die of broken heart, those who sink under the fatigues of the journey, those who perish from hunger in passing through famine-stricken or depopulated regions, and those who are stricken down by the murderous hand of their cruel owners, cases of all which Livingstone saw, a certain number reach the coast; and an account of their disposal there will close this chapter of their sad and shocking history.

"On visiting the slave-market (at Zanzibar), I found about 300 slaves exposed for sale, the greater part of whom came from Lake Nyassa and the Shiré River, others came from a place south-west of the lake. All who have grown up seem ashamed of being hawked about for sale. The teeth are examined, the cloth is lifted up to examine their lower limbs, and a stick is thrown for the slave to bring, and thus exhibit his paces. Some are dragged through the crowd by the hand, and the price called out incessantly. Most of the purchasers were Northern Arabs and Persians.

These are some of the features and effects of the slave trade. Much sympathy and indignation has been called forth by oppressed and destroyed nationalities. Here is an entire race prostrate and helpless under the most cruel oppression, an oppression which corrupts and threatens to exterminate it. Are the civilized and especially the Christian nations of the world to stand still and see this work of iniquity systematically and remorselessly carried on? The initiative in saving Africa from the horrors of the slave trade has been taken by a Mahomedan power. It remains to be seen what the Khedive can or will effect. Certain it is that the Egyptian officials are almost to a man against the movement. And singular it is that the great slave hunter of the Nile, Abou Saood, who carried on the slave trade in defiance of Baker, and did everything in his power to thwart him in his operations and defeat the object of his mission by stirring up the native chiefs against him, and who, at Baker's instance, was lodged in prison in Cairo, charged with serious crimes as well as misdemeanours, was liberated without trial and appointed second in command under Baker's successor, thus, as Baker remarks, instead of being punished was rewarded. We must therefore wait to see the result. The Christian nations show no sign of laying the axe to the root of this upas tree, but seem content to leave it to one of their family to lop off some of its branches where it can reach them.