A MODERN SLAVERY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2736, 22 August 1906, Page 11

A MODERN SLAVERY.

Mr Henry W. Nevinson has just published a book, which throws a muchneeded light upon some very dark places. During 1904 and 1905 he undertook a journey, at the suggestion of Harper's" Magazine, ta investigate the labour conditions in the cocoa plantations on the islands of San Thome and Principe, belonging to Portugal, and lying off the Portuguese possession of Angola, on the south-east coast of Africa. He landed first j on the mainland, commencing his investigations at Loanda-. He afterwards travelled inland through the Bihe country, and came back to the coast by the old slave route to Katumbella. His mission was concluded by a visit to San Thome and Principe. It is a painful story that Mr Nevrason has to tell. Almost wherever he went he found evidence of a flourishing trade in human beings, and at different places he saw the slaves at work. The fact that this slavery is called " contract labour" does not alter it at all. The labourers on the plantation at Loanda have all been bought from their enemies, their chiefs, or their parents ; and when an estate changes handi men, women^and children "are handed j over to the new owners, and become their property, just like the houses and the trees." To all these proceedings Portugal officially seems to turn a blind eye, and yet by repeated treaties with England and other Powers from 1830 to 1890 she agreed to suppress every kind of slave trade. By the Brussels I General Act of 1890 she bound herself with the other contracting countries to hold out protection to every fugitive slave, to stop all convoys of slaves on 1 the march, and to exercise strict supervi-j-sion at all ports, so as to pervent the sale < of shipment of slaves across the sea. How I lamentably she neglects to do either one i or other of these things the present narj rative clearly shows. But let us see what Mr Nevinson has to say. What, for inj stance, is the price that the human chatj tels in the portion of Portugal's territory under notice fetch? " The va^hie of a slave, man or woman, when landed at San Thome, is about £530, but as nearly as I could estimate the average price of a grown man in Benguela is £20 (lOOdbls). At that price the traders , there would be willing to supply a large | number. An Englishman whom I met . J there had been offered a gang of slaves, consisting of 40 men a«d women, at the rate of £18 a head. But the slaves were ud in Bihe, and the cost of transport down Ito the coast goes for something ; and, perJ haps, there was ' a reduction on taking a ( quantity.' The price of women on the i mainland is more variable, for it depends j almost entirely on their beauty and reputation. Even on the Benguela coast I think plenty of women could be procured j for agricultural, domestic, and other work at £15 a head, or even less. But for the [ purposes for which women are often | bought, the price naturally rises, and it , depends upon the ordinary causes which regulate such traffic," As regards the treatment of " domesj tic" slaves, Mr Nevinson is able to give I some facts from what he saw himself or from what men whom he could trust had i told him. He says :—: — j "At 5 o'clock one afternoon I saw two slaves carrying fish through an open square at Bengurfa, and enjoying their contact with civilisation in the form of another native who was driving them along like oxen with a sjambok. Thesame man who was offered the 40 slaves I at £18 a head had in sheer pity bought a little girl from a Portuguese lady last autumn, and he found her back scored all over with the cut of the chicote, just like the back of a trek-ox under training. An Englishman coming down from the interior last African winter was roused at night by loud cries in a Portuguese trading house at Mashiko. In the morning he found that a slave had been flogged and tied to a tree in the cold all night. He was a man who had only lately lost his liberty, and was undergoing the process which the Portuguese call ' taming,' as applied to new slaves who are sullen and show no pleasure in the advantages of their position." From Benguela Mr Nevinson struck into a district which had long had an evil reputation as the base of the slave trade with the interior. He gives incidentally a very graphic description of the " Hungry Country," through which he passed, and in a chapter devoted to the -worst part of the slave route he writes : — ' ' There are two ferries over the Cuanza, one close under the Portuguese fort, the other a comfortable distance up stream, well out of observation. It is a typically Portuguese arrangement. The commandant's duty is to stop the slave trade, bat how can he be expected to see what is going on a mile or two away? Even as you come down to the river, you find slave shackles hanging on the bushes. . . . You enter the forest again, and now the shackles are thick upon the trees. This is the place where most of the slaves, being driven from the interior, are untied. It is safe to let them loose here. The Cuanza is just in front, and behind them lies the long stretch of Hungry Country, which they could never get through alive if they tried to run back to their homes. So it is that the trees on the western edge of the Hungry Country bear shackles in profusion — shackles for the hands, shackles for the feet, shackles for three or four slaves, who are clamped together afc night. . . . The path is strewn with dead men's bones. You see the white thigh bones lying in front of your feet, and at one side, among the undergrowth, you find the skull. These are the skeletons of slaves who have been unable to keep up with the march, and so were murdered or left to die." Mr Nevinson, as already stated, returned to the coast by the old slave route to Benguela. Down this road thousands of export slaves still come every year, and he tells us that in the northern part

,of the Bihe d&trict he pa*SwJ tife fetus* of a- Portuguese trader who is StiJl claim*ing enormous damages for injury to his property in the war of 1902 :—": — " The villagers harce appealed to the fort at Belmonte against the amount, but are ordered to pay whatever he asks. To supply the necessary rubber and oxen they have now pawned their children into slavery without hope of redemption. Two days before I passed the house a villager, having pawned the last of his children, and possessing nothing, else, had shot himself iii the bush close by. Things like that make no difference to the trader. It is the money he wants." When Mr Nevinson got back to Benguela he was "able to follow the slaves' progress almost point by point. A day or two before the steamer which was to convey them to the islands arrived the officials began to stir :—: — "Then early one morning the Curador arrives, and takes his- seat in the long,low room, as representing tbe beneficent Government of Portugal. Into his presence the slaves aTe herded in gangs by the official agent. They are ranged up, 1 and, in accordance with the decree of January 29, 1903, they are asked whether they go willingly as labourers to San Thome. No attention of any kind is paid to their answer. In most cases no answer is given. Not the slightest notice would be taken of a refusal. The legal contract for five years* tfltbour on the island of San Thome and Principe is then draven out. . . . The tin discs are hurrg round their necks. . . . All are then ranged up and marched out again either to the compound, where they are shut in, or straight to tbe pier, where the lighters, which- are to take them to the ship, lie tossing on the waves. . . . The requirements of legalised slavery have been satisfied. The Government has ' redeemed' the slaves which its own agents have so diligently ; and so profitably collected. They weat into the tribunal as slaves, they have corns' out as ' contracted fefeourers.' No one in heaven or on earth can see the smallest difference, but by the change of name Portugal stifles the enfeebled protests ef nations lilfe the English, and by the excuse of law she smoothes her confidence and whitens over one of the blackest crimes which even Africa can show." Mr Nevinson sailed to San Thome in the steamer which carried 272 slaves, and some of the incidents of that short voyage , should cause the reader's blood to tingle. ' • As San Thome came ki sighf the sla-ves on deck regarded the scene with apathy, but here is a description of one little scene : — " Two girls of about 15 or 16, evi-dently-sisters, whom I had before noticed for a sort of pathetic beauty, sat huddled together quietly crying, ... In the confusion of casting anchor I stood by them unobserved, and in a low voice asked them a few questions in Umbundu, which I had crammed up for the purpose. The answers were brief, in sobbing whispers; sometimes by gestures only. The conversation ran like this : ' Why are you here V 'We were sold to the white men.' 'Did you come of your own free will V 'Of course not.' ' Where did you come from V ' From Bihe.' ' Are you slaves or not V 'Of course we are slaves.' ' Would you like to go back? The delicate little brown hands were stretched out, palm downwards, and the crying began afresh." As to the remedy for the- terrible state of things which he describes. Mr Nevinson is almost hopeless of England doing anything. He thinks deliverance is more • likely to come from the New World. " LetAmerica declare that her will is set against slavery, and at her voice the abominable traffic in human beings between Angola and the islands will collapse as the slave trade to Brazil collapsed at the voice of England in the days of her greatness." But England, one would fain hope, is not so indifferent to horrors of the kind as Mr Nevinson would have us believe. His book, at all events, should do much to enlighten men and women in this country and elsewhere on the facts.