alarm our presence caused, when discovered. A shriek from the poor women, and an indiscriminate rush into the forest, was the first impulse; and all, save two or three men to whom we were known, seemed prepared for the worst. The chief, a fine old fellow, who thoroughly appreciated the English presence in the country, soon insisted on their coming back. Confidence appeared to be restored with the dance. But no; the spirit of the thing was gone; the fright had been too great. We gained what we wanted in a moment when we stated our object in calling; and the chief, well satisfied with the quid pro quo, snatched up the burden of the foremost man, and, running on in front, himself pointed out every little stone or stump that might hurt the foot, and guided us back to the main path.

I should not dwell on this trivial incident, but that it was one of the shadows at the time, that came before events we afterwards witnessed-scenes of death and wrong which it would take a careless memory to forget. Then the land teemed with inhabitants, now it is all but desolate. Scarce a remnant has escaped. The storm of war has swept the land of all but the few who have found shelter amidst the craigs on the mountains, and the famine has followed up its victims to their hidingplaces in the swamps. The sudden dread it was to see a few pale faces in the land told its own tale. The slavers had followed quickly on the first explorer's steps; and, when he returned with us in 1861, they were there before us. His fair fame had by them been made the thin end of the wedge for their purposes.

The Portuguese settlers at the town of Tette, on the Zambesi, were only too anxious to avail themselves of the opportunities afforded by the introduction to a new country and a new slave-trade. Sad, indeed, it is to think that, after all, the greatest curse to the black race is the white dweller in its vicinity. But so it is; and, although some four or five men must be placed in a different category from the rest, a greater nest of

At

slavers does not exist than in the Portuguese dominions of East Africa. the very time we went up the steep sides of the highland plateau, we met their agents coming down with the firstfruits of the discovery-droves of young men, women, and children; not but what their hitherto successful venture received its quietus when it so happened that we met face to face.

The more shameful, too, did this freshly opened traffic appear, inasmuch as it was not for the ordinary hundred and one abominations which the slave-trade is father to. The Portuguese ivory-traders had lately found that there was a necessity for changing their plans in dealing with the Caffre tribes, from whom they collect ivory for the most part; for, although elephants abound on the Shiré, they get little thence, owing to the impenetrable nature of the cover. The Caffres, always at war amongst themselves, have suffered so much during the last few years, that, in many tribes bordering on the Zambesi (and not those of the Caffre blood alone), women and children are hardly to be found. The hardships of war have killed them nearly all off. The fighting men who have stood it out, and who have no faith in the trumpery muskets, so given to bursting, with which the trader has heretofore supplied them, now tell him that female slaves, and children to adopt into their tribe, are the best barter goods for them.

Another disaster aided the plans of the slavers considerably at the date I refer to. A tribe called the Ajawa (the Uhiao or Uhiyow of Krapff, Speke, Burton, and others) was driven down, by a slave war on the north, to the confines of the Manganja tribe. The Ajawa were undergoing very great privations, and gladly sold their own people to the slave-traders. These gave them in exchange, besides the ordinary articles of barter, powder and muskets, and stayed in their camps, well knowing the issue. Grist was sure to come to their mill, for the Ajawa were made doubly strong. At the worst of times, from their superior pluck, they were a terror to the Manganja. As soon as captives were made in the daily raids,

they were brought in and sold to the slavers. Then, when the gang of, say eighty or ninety boys, women, and children was collected, the villains into whose clutches they had fallen marched them off to Tette. An English resident there, at the time the first trade in slaves was opened with the Ajawa, informed me he saw them arrive at the rate of two hundred per week.

Let not the apologists for one of the most hideous sins under the sun bring in their usual statement that, in the white man's custody, the black slave's condition is raised and improved, and that it is for the interest of both drover and dealer to take care of the newlymade purchase. I know not what your chivalrous Southerner may do, on his own cotton plantation, with the stalwart "chattel" he has given many hundred dollars for; nor do I care to go into his treatment of the pretty slave girl, for whom price in his eyes was no object; but this I do know about the Portuguese slave-master, that I would not wish my worst enemy to learn the first rudiments of human suffering and human devilry at his hands.

Most of the poor things we met were purchased for what was at that time equivalent to tenpence in England; viz. two yards of either the blue calico imported from Goa, or the unbleached calico of Manchester and America. Some might fetch more-a mother and her child, for instance. From what came to our knowledge, however, I do not suppose the chance of the child's ever reaching the mother's destination was much thought of in the bargain by buyer or seller.

Let us hear what Dimanje can relate of his last night's lodging, and the march this morning, as he sits rubbing his neck, which the first honest English saw that was ever in the land has just liberated from the huge stick lying at his feet. He is loquacious, and his heart is warm within him, for he realizes his liberty. Can he doubt it as, with the yoke from off his neck, and the bonds loosened from his sadly-chafed limbs, he makes them into a fire and cooks

therewith the only happy meal he has eaten for many a day.

I will translate for him and the others, who eagerly add to his testimony: "When the sun went out on "the yesterday, the village of the chief "Sochi was come to. Wishing to reach "it, you must go hence when the cock "cries, and it is come to when the sun "is so high (pointing at an angle of 45°). "The Chikoondas (the drovers) there "cooked, and we, bound in these slave "sticks, were placed in the hut; it is of "the large size in the middle of the "village. The Chikoondas, their "stomachs full, slept across the en"trances with their guns. In the night "there was of sleep nothing for us. "One, a strong man, heard that the "Chikoonda snored, and his heart said "he could escape. "stick before him, "there; he is outside.

66

snores and snores.

Holding his heavy he passes; he is

The Chikoonda
We, ah, our

"hearts beat! we are dead-we fear so.

Then, said Dimanje, came the worst of all. They were dragged out, and the women were beaten with sticks, and the men tied up by their wrists to the trees so high that their toes only just touched the ground; they did nothing but wail and sob all night till the morning dawned. Nor did their case improve with daylight. The drovers were determined not to lose another. The women, such as had no heavy burden to carry, were tied neck to neck, with hard bark thongs, and their hands bound behind them. The men were coupled one behind the other, by tying their slave

sticks two and two. These said sticks weigh from 35lbs. to 40lbs. each; and, when a man's head is fixed in the fork at the one end, by an iron pin, forming a triangle round his neck, he is helpless; for the wood is generally six feet long. The intermediate links in the chain were the poor children, scarred and covered with sores, their bones starting through their skins, and for whom a bark halter was considered enough security. Thus the gang set off and thus we met it. As we passed over the ground the next day, two spots were pointed out to us. At the one it appeared a man, who had fallen sick, and might hinder the march, was taken out of the line and brained with an axe: at the other we were told a poor woman had shown symptoms of distress; the drover, in no better temper as the day wore on, and no doubt thinking it better to lose one than both, took her poor child from off her back, and dashed its brains out against a tree, holding it by the feet; he then threw the body into the brush beside the path.

Enough of such scenes: we saw too much of them, and heard of other deeds, and from the Portuguese, as done amongst themselves, that for refinement of barbarity are actually appalling. In the settlements one finds here and there a humane man and a gentleman; to two or three such we owe a great debt of gratitude; but it is a penal colony. Half the representatives are with native blood in them, and cruel beyond conception.

We did our best, and for some time were a stumbling-block to the trade. But the extermination caused by the slave trade, once begun, is carried out in three acts. The slavedealer can reckon on three harvests, each one better in succession.

First comes the war-tribe against tribe, village against village. He must be on the spot to be the leaven in the yeast, the supplier of the means, the fomenter of the quarrel, and the encourager of the kidnapper; no tool will work better for his purposes than this last, and will add more to the fighting and reprisals when found out. Then No. 66.-VOL. XI.

follows the famine-the result of the disturbance in the land. The fields, which, if left untilled in the wet season, are barren for the year, produce nothing, and the chief, sorely pinched, sells his people, and the husband some of his wives or relations. After this comes the worst state of all. parched and dry as season, is forsaken for the the river in the valley. vating in the swamps and

it

The hill country, is in the hot damp banks of Here, by culti

on the islands,

corn may at all times be grown. Others are there before, and the starving wretch swims over by night to steal from the well-watched garden. Then comes the fight for life. Day and night it goes on -worse and worse as more come, and there is less to eat. The slavedealer need not stray into the hill country now; a few handfuls of corn will buy the child from the father who cannot see it perish. He must be quick though; the game is nearly at an end; a journey or two more, and all will be silent. The hyæna and the vulture can pick and choose, and the crocodiles can lazily let the bodies go past them, for there is enough and to spare with all their kith and kin. Livingstone had to clear his paddle-wheels of the dead each morning as the Pioneer came up the Shiré to us in 1863.

The land has become in three years, as other vast tracts have to the north and east of it beneath the same harrow, all but a desolate wilderness. The few who are left have no one to rally under. A bad drought added to the evils; but it was a partial one, and the natives could, in times of peace, have weathered a much worse visitation.

A handful of Dimanje's companions are now on English territory. The full assurance that was first planted in them has there grown well, and they may yet be able to tell their countrymen of the power of a state to which no slave can belong. When we parted at Cape Town, there was the same wailing and the same cry that had gone up in the few hours before we first met. Thank God, tears can flow from other causes than pain and sorrow.

FF

The

Before I conclude these sketchy items of our travels, I do not wish to miss the opportunity of stating the opinion of most who were with us respecting the character of the native of East Africa. So many prejudiced notions are getting stereotyped on the subject, that I am the more anxious to have a say. opinion may gain some little weight from being formed on the experiences of three years' living in the land, and anotheryear's less close observation in the neighbourhood. During the three years we were behind that fringe of double-dyed evil that dwells on the coast, we saw that the representatives of the white man, more shame for them, have made things very much worse than they would be were they absent. I believe the East African not only capable of helping himself as much as his brother of the pure negro blood on the West Coast is now doing, but more so. No one who has seen the two can doubt that the Ajawa, for instance, is of a higher type altogether. He is quite alive to the act of suicide the slave trade is; nay he almost takes the words out of one's mouth in pointing out the destructive influence it is. He admits it must bring about woe and disaster, and that with the young weeded out from the tribe, there is nothing for the old to lean on.

The communication the tribes have had with the traders, Arabs or halfcastes, have awakened in them wants that are now necessities. Guns, powder, beads, calico, they must have: the only exchange that will be accepted is slaves and ivory. Under another regime, depend upon it, the cotton would come, and the fibres and the oils, as they do on the West Coast. But the time has not come yet when practical common sense is to take the place of useless expenditure. Those Governments whose power, wealth, and good hearts, lead them to interfere for the benefit of the human race, should use tact to make their enormous exertions of use. The

French Government all honour to it! stayed the emigration scheme from the East Coast, the moment they found it was being abused. What does the

English Government do by cruising squadrons, which, although carrying as noble fellows as ever pitied human misery, have to contend against circumstances that baffle all their efforts. Here and there a large slaver is taken-not one per annum (I speak of the East Coast), and a whole squad of Arab dhow owners live in a state of terror. These, even if caught in the Sultan of Zanzibar's waters, must be set free, for he requires 20,000 slaves a year for his own special market, and they all come off from the coast to his island, where his power must be upheld at those costs "no man can understand:" at least, no man who gets an insight into existing scandals by going to the ends of the earth to see them as they are. Studied in his native land, the African improves as confidence in his visitor grows, and it were a libel to say he is either incapable of affection, or of good results from good treatment.

But there is in the beginning a great barrier of misconception to be got over. Once passed, the poor fellows cling to you as drowning men would. Some of the very natives who at first threatened Livingstone as he steamed up the river Shiré in the Ma Robert, crowded down to the Pioneer four years afterwards to en treat me to ask him to take the remnant of them away, they cared not whither; he had been tried by them and not found wanting. The English name will last there the thing it is. It is a foundation on which any honest man can build to his own good and theirs; but he must be the man openhearted, frank and firm-must be as Mackenzie was. "Ah," said a man to me once who had known him, marking off about an inch at the top of his forefinger, "the "heart of an Ajawa has a little bit of "it good like this, but all the rest of "it is bad; the white man's heart is all "good." They often spoke of Mackenzie with a sigh, "Bishoppi, he was a man, oa komantima,' of a sweet heart."

I can return his compliment to the English, by saying we never thought it other than an insult to the Maker who gave the black race its allotted place in the ranks of humanity to consider it as

one at all points inferior. But, where self-interest comes in, this is not always the verdict. An adventurous old Portuguese I often had a chat with, and who had something to tell, having been taken out of slavers six times by cruisers, used to gesticulate with one hand, which added force as he tried to impress on me that the natives were not human beings "but brutes of the fields," whilst with the other he gave sweets to a tribe of little mahogany-coloured children, that forbade me talking of connecting links. In short,

in dealing with the slave trade, you must bear Mr. Darwin's theory in mind. Το have to do with it, and to engage in it, is to subject your nature to a process which will in time accommodate soul and body to its requirements; and from such a man-one who directly or indirectly gains by its wickedness-I would take opinion on its merits, the rather meeting all remarks on the subject with the answer given to him who accused the other of being no gentleman, "Sir, you're no judge."

BY HENRY KINGSLEY, AUTHOR OF

CHAPTER LXXIX.

THE END OF THE CYCLONE.

BACK through the groaning forest came the return blast, crashing the half-burnt trees into ruins, and bearing the smoke of the burning forest before it like a curtain of darkness. We spoke no more, for this new phase of the hurricane was more terrible to look on than any which had preceded it. I saw the forest light up again into a more lurid blaze than before, which apparently was bearing down straight upon us; I would have run back that I might perish with my wife and my child in my arms. But Trevittick's strong hand restrained me, and he laughed.

and

"Don't be a coward," he said; "there is no danger now. Look at this, man, if you have courage; you will never see the like in fifty lives. Look aloft."

I did so. The smoke was clearing fast, and I saw overhead, to the windward, a wall of ink-black cloud, from which streamed, spreading below as they were caught by the wind, four or five dark purple cataracts of rain. Terrible enough this; but why were they lit up with strange coruscating splendours of scarlet, of orange, and of violet? That

was caused by the incessant leaping lightning which followed the curtain of rain.

All night the wind rushed round the house like the sighs of a dying giant; all night the thunder snarled, and the lightning leaped and hissed, till the house was as bright as day; and I sat, with the child upon my knee and my wife sitting at my feet, listening to the fierce deluges of rain which were spouting from the house-eaves.

Sometime in the night Martha took the child. She had been very silent before, from fear, or what not; but I noticed that the rocking of the child to and fro did for her what it seems to do for all mothers; it loosened her tongue. She spoke to me, turning her quiet eyes to mine.

"I am not afraid now, James." "You have been so brave and so good."

"Have I? I am glad of that. I was afraid I had not been doing my duty. Perhaps it was your mother kept me up."

Bless the little heroine; there were a dozen maimed creatures in the house now tended by my father and mother; who could contradict her?

James, dear, do you like Mr. Trevittick?"