Chapter II.—Continued.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 105, 1 May 1875, Page 6

Chapter ll. —Continued.

'During our residence on the snores of the Nyassa, we had. ocular proof of the vigour with which this infamous traffic is carried on. Col. Rigby, the English consul and tho representative of her Britanic Majesty at Zanzibar, told us that, at the custom-house of that town, no less ' than nineteen thousand slaves were registered annually from the province of Nyassa alone. We must recollect also that these figures do not include the slaves who have been passed on to the Portuguese portsl Yet this frightful number doea not represent one-tenth of the misery produced by tlie slave' trade j for those who are dragged from their homes to the slave market form but a fraction of the actual victims. In order to judge of these horrors one must see them at their fountain-head. For a hundred individuals taken hi these raids, many thousands of men, women, and children are killed, or die of their wounds ; while multitudes of others sink from hunger and thirst while striving to make their escape. Thousands more perish in tho civil wars engendered, as we have said before, by the demand for slaves. The innumerable number of human skeletons which we found in the woods or along the high roads leading to the deserted and depopulated villages, were sufficient to attest the terrible loss of life which this cursed trade entails. From what we have seen with our own eyes, I am ready to affirm, with the strongest conviction of the conscientious exactness of my statement, that each slave only represents a fifth of these human victims. ' The survivros of the hamlet situated at the foot of the Moramr bala had been reduced to the utmost misery by the famous Mariono, the great purveyor of the Portugese slave merchants. We saw the hunting about for roots, insects, vermin — anything, in fact, with which to stay their hunger till the following harvest. Every moment we came upon floating corpses on the river, and every morning we had to clear the wheels of our steamer from the bodies which had got entangled in the paddles during the night. • 'This fearful mortality and desolation was really heartbreaking to see. The shores of the lake, once so thickly peopled, were utterly deserted; the villages were all burnt; the crops destroyed or carried away. A silence of death had succeeded to the joyous hum of life in the hamlets, where, on the occasion of our last visit, an industrious crowd had gathered round us to sell the produce of their land. Spectral shadows, gaunt skeletons, of whom by the size and height alone we could discover the sex or age, were crawling about the deserted huts, with famishing eyes and dying looks; and they, alas, after a day or two more of suffering, would add to the number of the victims. ' Our expedition, I believe, is the first, if not the only one, which has traced up this infamous traffic to its origin, and followed it in all its phases ; and therefore we have given these minute details of the terrible results of this odious trade. In fact, this sale of one man by another is the cause of such innumerable murders, that it is as impossible to class it among other branches of conlmerce as it would be to consider highway robbery, assassination, and piracy legitimate occupations. 'It is not the guilty, but the innocent, who suffer. The child of the poor man is seized and sold for a trifling debt or fine." Then come the gelabas, who one "by one, or in bands cjpy off the little ones who have gone to fetch water at the well or pick up wood. In many districts that we have seen, each house is surrounded by a strono- blockade ; hut even then the inhabitants is not safe. These cruel°rapes naturally bring about reprisals. Bands aretormed; the strife widens. From one village after the other it passes on to the tribes. The weakest go the wall, or lead a wandering lif e ; they purchase arms and a-nmunition by the sale of some of their captives, attack a neigboring tribe, and make it their business to furnish human flesh to the markets along the coast. ' Armed bands, headed by commercial agents belonging to the Arabs and Portuguese, are sent into the interior, with large quantities of muskets, ammunition, glass beads, and cotton goods. This merchandise is sent nominally to pay the expenses cf the ■journey and to purchase ivory. But not one of these caravans has failed to induce one or other of their native tribes to make inroads on their neighbors with the view of capturing slaves. I do not know a single instance to the contrary. This last named system, especially when carried out by the bands dispatched by the Portugese from Tete, generally results in a carnage which defies all description. Like most doctors we have witnessed many sad and and painful scenes, and death, in its varied forms, is familiar to us. But the horrors produced in this traffic of human flesh exceed anything we could ever have believed, if we had not witnessed them.' Such is the testimony of Dr. Livingstone. And if to this fearful slave trade we add anthropophagy, the adoration of a serDent and human sacrifices, whereby thousands of victims perish annually, it must be allowed that, of all countries on the face of the earth, Africa is the most to be pitied, the most nuhappy and the most neglected; consequently the most worthy of our interest and compassion. If it please God, we propose, before long, to publish another work, which will make known still further the deplorable state of oriental Africa, as well as the vast project lately formed for rescuing the land of Ham from its fearful state of degradation. But for the moment we limit ourselvesto the facts which we have given in the proceeding chapters, and which confirm and explain the fate of Su^ma, whose sad story we are now about to givo to our readers from her own lips.

These goods, divided in equal portions, are placed on the heads and porters, while the rest are loaded with provisions and tent furniture. In front marches the guide, called a Ktrcmgozi, with a sack on his back, a flag in his hand, and a tin horn at his side. Thus equipped the caravan sets out, and goes five or six hundred miles into the interior. There they exchange their merchandise with, the productions of the country: aromatic spices, ambergris, ivory, and especially slaves of every age and sex. This human traffic is carried on as we have previously described. The negro tribes, who know the cupidity of the Arabs, make war with each other in order to obtain slaves whom they may sell to these passing caravans. With a thirst for gain which is often fomented by Europeans, these fratricidal wars are carried on without mercy on either side. English Protestant travellers (quite as much as Catholic missioners) have scarcely been able to restrain their indignation at the atrocities perpetrated on these occasions, of which the slave trade is the real origin. Dr. Livingstone writes again: