THE SLAVE TRADE IN CENTRAL AFRICA.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 879, 4 January 1889, Page 10

THE SLAVE TRADE IN CENTRAL AFRICA.

Y. Lovett Cameron, in a letter oa

this subject in The Times, says : I believe that we have higher and more important duties than the extension of our commercial interests, notwithstanding the necessity that our manufacturers experience for the securing of new markets for British goods. The wellbeing of the natives of Africa, and their protection from the evil deeds of slave-dealers, may bo said in. one sense to be everybody’s and therefore nobody’s business, but lam loth to believe that Great Britain will relax her efforts in the cause of freedom whan they are most needed, and when, if successful, they are likely to be most useful. The last trench is always the most hotly contested, bub when it is won victory is secured, and this is the case now in Africa. A supreme effort should .now be made to attack the slave-dealers in their hunting grounds, and by aiding the races whom they are barbarously destroying, put an end once and for all to the slave trade in Central Africa. “We all hoped much for the cause of freedom from the establishment of the Congo Free State j but, without attempting to pass judgment on the conduct of it 3 rulers, which with the imperfect data we have at our sommand, is impossible, I cannot help thinking that fancied commercial and scientific interests have been preferred to those of freedom, with the result that no real good has been achieved for any one of the three. The transference of that portion of the coaßt ceded by the Sultan of Zanzibar to the German East African Company is not being accomplished peaceably, and our Consul at Zanzibar has had to advise the withdrawal of the members of the university mission from Majila, and to give orders that no British subjects are to proceed into the interior. This does not increase our hopes that the expedition of Lieutenant Wissmann will meet with success, and it may be feared that the caravan of the Imperial British African Association, which has quitted, or is about to quit, Mombassa, may meet with opposition from all Arabs in the interior, and that its purpose of reaching Wadelai may be interfered with. “In the interests of the people of Central Africa, who, according to Cardinal Lavigerie, are perishing at the rate of 6000 a day, I plead for something to be done. Government interference i 3 not desirable, but there is nothing to prevent the line of Lakes Nyassa and Tanganyika being occupied, and the slave routes between Manyuema, Übira, and the other hunting-grounds of the human fiends, who are now depopulating Africa and their markets in the East, being ab solutely blocked. An extension of this line northward would bring us to Wadelai, and Emin, if he still holds out, be really succoured, instead of having the strain of providing for a starving and disorganised expedition thrown upon his hands. “No better memorial to the memory of Gordon and Livingtone could be raised than the establishment of this line of blockade, which, while it would link together the territories for whose benefit they laboured, would at the same time put into a practical form the wishes and desires of both these great African travellers and martyrs. I have estimated the cost of material and personnel for this blockade, and findthatitisnotgreater than has been lavished on some so. called exploring expeditions. To organise, to calculate, to plan, especially when working alone, at the commencement of an undertaking requires both time and labour, and though I have worked out much in detail, it is as yet scarcely fit for the ordeal of public criticism. The main and central idea, however, is the maintenance by a British association (non-commercial, be it remembered) of an anti-slavery cordonfrom the Shire to the north end of the Tanganyika, and, if means are forthcoming, to the Albert Nyanza. For this it will be necessary that the Zimbesi shall remain an open highway, and Lord Salisbury has pledged his word that it shall be so. By this °line constant communication would be kept up, and we should have none of those unsatisfactory plunges into the unknown which, even if successful, cause so much anxiety to the friends of those who are thus lost to view.”