EXTRACTS FROM DR. LIVINGSTONE'S SECOND LETTER.

Waikato Times, Volume II, Issue 76, 24 October 1872, Page 2

EXTRACTS FROM DR. LIVINGSTONE'S SECOND LETTER.

THE INHABIXHNTS OF MANITUBItA.. " When parties leave Ujiji and go Westwards into Mauyu mu, Iho question asked is not what goods they, have, but how many guns and kegs of gunpowder. If thoy have 200 or 300 muskets, and ammunition, in proportion, they think success is certain. The Manyuema wero found to be tcrriflod by. the report of guns ; some, I know, believe them to bo supernatural, for when the ofl'ect of'tt musket ball was shown on u goat, thoy looked up to the clouds, and offered to bring ivory to buy the charm by which lightning was drawn down. When a village was assault fd, the men fled in terror, and women and children were captured. s[any of the Manyueina women,, especially down the Lualaba, are very pretty, light coloured, and lovely. It was common to hear tlio Zanzibar slaves —whose faces resemble the features of London door-knookers, which some atrocious ironfounder thought were Jike those of lions— my to each other, ' Oil; if we had Manyuema wives, what pretty children we should get.!' Manyuema men and women were all vastly superior to the alares, who evidently felt the inferiority they had acquired by •wallowing in the mire of bondage. Many of tho men were tull strapping fellows, with but little of what we think distinctive of the negro about them. If one relied on the teachings of phrenology, tho Mnnyuema men would take a high place in tho human family. They felt their superiority, and often said, truly, ' Were it not for firearms, not one of the strangers would ever leave our country. . If a comparison were instituted and Manyuemn, taken at random, placed opposite, say, the members of the Anthropological Society of London, clad like them in kilts of grass cloth, 1 should like to tnke my place alongside the Manyuema, on the principle of preferring tho company of my betters ; the philosophers would look wofully scraggy. But though the ' inferior race, , as we compassionately call them, have finely-formed heads, and often handsome features, they aro undoubtedly cannibals. Die country abounds in food of all kinds, and tho rich soil raises everything planted in great luxuriance. A friend of mine tried rico, and it yielded one hundred and twenty fold ; three measures of seed yielded 'SGO measures. Maize is ao

abundant, that 1 have seen forty-five loads, each about 601b., given fov a single goat. It was pnz/Jing to hco why they should be cannibals. The Manyuema hnvo plenty of pigs and other domestic animals, and yet they are cannibals. Into the reasons of their cannibalism Ido not enter. They say that human flesh is not equal to that of goats or pigs ; it is saltish and makes them, dream of the dead. Why fine-looking men like them should be so low in the moral sei'Jo can only be attributed to tho non-introduction of that religion which makes those distinctions among men which phrenology and other ologies cannot explain. The religion of Christ is undoubtedly tho best for man." TTOTTRTTILE CTTSTOKS, ASD XTGOKTC MOSLEMS. "The Manyuema women, especially far down tho Lualaba, are very pretty and very industrious. Tho

market is with them a great institution, and they work hard and carry far, in order to have something to sell. Markets are established about ten or fifteen miles apart. All are dressed in their best—gaudycoloured, many-folded, kiKs that reach from thowai'si; to the knee. When 2,000 or 3,000 are together they enforce justice, though chiofly women, and they aro so eager traders they set ofF in companies by night, and begin to run as soon as they come within the hum arisiug from hundreds of voices. To haggle, and joke, and laicrh, and cheat, seems to be the "dearest enjoyment of lif.. The Manyuema havo always told us that women going to market were never molested. When the men of two districts were engaged in actual hostilities the women passod through from one market to another unharmed; to take her goods, even in

war, was a thing not to be done. But to these-market-women the half-castes directed their gun*. Two cases that came under my own observation wero so sickening I cannot allow the mind to dwell upon or write about them. Many of both sexes were killed, but the women and children chiefly were made captives. No matter how much ivory they had obtained, these "Nigger Moslems" must haVo slaves, and they assaulted the markets and villages, and made captives chiefly, as it appeared to me, because, as the men run off at the report of guns, they could do it without danger. I had no idea before how bloodthirsty men can be when they can pour out the blood of fellow men in safety. And all this carnage is going o.i in Manyuema at the very time I write. It is hho Banians, our protected Indian fellow-subjects, that indirectly do it all! We have conceded to the Sultan of Zanzibar the right, which it was not ours to give, of a certain amount of slave-trading, and that amount has been from £12,000 to £20,000 a year. As we liavo seen, these are not traded for—but murdered for. They are not slaves, but free people made captive. A Sulian with a sense of justice would, instead, of taking head-money, declare that all weae free as soon as they re.xcbed his territory. But the Banians have the custom-house and all the Sultan's revenue entirely in their hands. He cannot trust his Maho-meda-n subject, eten of the better class, to farm his income, because, as they themselves say, he would get nothing in return but a crop of lies. The Banians naturally work the castom-houae so as to screen the'r own slaving agents; and bo-long as they have the power to promote it, their atrocious system of slaving will never cea3e.. For the sake of lawful commerce it would be politic to insist that the Sultan's revenue by the custom-house should be- placed in the hands of an English or American merchant of known- reputation and uprightness. By this arrangement theSultan would be esalted to a position it has neverheld since Banians and Moslems emigrated into Eastern Africa, and Christianity, to which the slave trade is an insurmountable barrier, would find an open door."