Chapter XII (13)

In the despotic races, the Wakilima or mountaineers of Chhaga, for instance, the subjects are reduced to the lowest state of servility. All, except the magicians and the councillors, are “Wasoro”--soldiers and slaves to the sultan, mangi, or sovereign. The reader will bear in mind that the word “sultan” is the Arabic term applied generically by traders to all the reguli and roitelets, the chiefs and headmen, whose titles vary in every region. In Uzaramo the Sultan is called p’hazi; in Khutu, p’hazi or mundewa; in Usagara, mundewa; in Ugogo, mteme; in Unyamwezi, mwami; in Ujiji and Karagwah, mkama. “Wazir” is similarly used by the Arabs for the principal councillor or minister, whose African name in the several tribes is mwene goha, mbáhá, mzágírá, magáwe, mhángo, and muhinda. The elders are called throughout the country Wagosi and Wányáp’hárá; they form the council of the chief. All male children are taken from their mothers, are made to live together, and are trained to the royal service, to guarding the palace, to tilling the fields, and to keeping the watercourses in order. The despot is approached with fear and trembling; subjects of both sexes must stand at a distance, and repeatedly clap their palms together before venturing to address him. Women always bend the right knee to the earth, and the chief acknowledges the salutation with a nod. At times the elders and even the women inquire of the ruler what they can do to please him: he points to a plot of ground which he wishes to be cleared, and this _corvée_ is the more carefully performed, as he fines them in a bullock if a weed be left unplucked. In war female captives are sold by the king, and the children are kept to swell the number of his slaves. None of the Wasoro may marry without express permission. The king has unlimited power of life and death, which he exercises without squeamishness, and a general right of sale over his subjects; in some tribes, as those of Karagwah, Uganda, and Unyoro, he is almost worshipped. It is a capital offence to assume the name of a Sultan; even a stranger so doing would be subjected to fines and other penalties. The only limit to the despot’s power is the Ada, or precedent, the unwritten law of ancient custom, which is here less mutable than the codes and pandects of Europe. The African, like the Asiatic, is by nature a conservative, at once the cause and the effect of his inability to rise higher in the social scale. The king lives in a manner of barbarous state. He has large villages crowded with his families and slaves. He never issues from his abode without an armed mob, and he disdains to visit even the wealthiest Arabs. The monarchical tribes are legitimists of the good old school, disdaining a _novus homo_; and the consciousness of power invests their princes with a certain dignity and majesty of demeanour. As has been mentioned, some of the Sultans whose rule has the greatest prestige, appear, from physical peculiarities, to be of a foreign and a nobler origin.

In the aristocratical or semi-monarchical tribes, as the Wanyamwezi, the power of the Sultan depends mainly upon his wealth, importance, and personal qualifications for the task of rule. A chief enabled to carry out a “fist-right” policy will raise himself to the rank of a despot, and will slay and sell his subjects without mercy. Though surrounded by a council varying from two to a score of chiefs and elders, who are often related or connected with him, and who, like the Arab shaykhs, presume as much as possible in ordering this and forbidding that, he can disregard and slight them. More often, however, his authority is circumscribed by a rude balance of power; the chiefs around him can probably bring as many warriors into the field as he can. When weak, the sultan has little more authority than the patell of an Indian village or the shaykh of a Bedouin tribe. Yet even when the chief cannot command in his own clan, he is an important personage to travelling merchants and strangers. He can cause a quarrel, an advance, or an assassination, and he can quiet brawls even when his people have been injured. He can open a road by providing porters, or bar a path by deterring a caravan from proceeding, or by stopping the sale of provisions. Thus it is easy to travel amongst races whose chiefs are well disposed to foreigners, and the utmost circumspection becomes necessary when the headmen are grasping and inhospitable. Upon the whole, the chiefs are wise enough to encourage the visits of traders.

A patriarchal or purely republican form of government is unknown in East Africa. The Wasagara, it is true, choose their chief like the Banyai of “Monomotapa,” but, once elected, he becomes a monarch. Loyalty--or, to reduce it to its elements, veneration for the divinity that hedges in a king--is a sentiment innate in the African mind. Man, however, in these regions is not a political animal; he has a certain instinctive regard for his chief and a respect for his elders. He ignores, however, the blessings of duly limited independence and the natural classification of humanity into superior and inferior, and honours--the cheap pay of nations--are unknown. He acknowledges no higher and lower social strata. His barbarism forbids the existence of a learned oligarchy, of an educated community, or of a church and state, showing the origin of the connection between the soul and body of society. Man being equal to man, force being the only law and self the sole consideration, mutual jealousy prevents united efforts and deadens all patriotic spirit. No one cares for the public good; the welfare of the general must yield to the most contemptible individual interests; civil order and security are therefore unknown, and foreign relations cannot exist.

In the lowest tribes the chieftain is a mere nonentity, “a Sultan,” as the Arabs say, “within his own walls.” His subjects will boast, like the Somal, that he is “_tanquam unus ex nobis_;” and they are so sensible of restraint that “girdles and garters would be to them bonds and shackles” metaphorically as well as literally. The position of these Sultans is about equal to that of the diwans of the Mrima; their dignity is confined to sitting upon a dwarf three-legged stool, to wearing more brass wire than beads, and to possessing clothes a little better than those of their subjects. The “regulus” must make a return present to strangers after receiving their offerings, and in some cases must begin with gifts. He must listen to the words of his councillors and elders, who, being without salary, claim a portion of the presents and treasure-trove, interfere on all occasions of blackmail, fines, and penalties, demand from all petitioners gifts and bribes to secure interest, and exert great influence over the populace.

Legitimacy is the rule throughout the land, and the son, usually the eldest, succeeds to the father, except amongst the Wasukuma of N. Unyamwezi, where the line of descent is by the sister’s son--the “surer side”--for the normal reason, to secure some of the blood royal for ruling. Even the widows of the deceased become the property of the successor. This truly African practice prevails also amongst the Bachwana, and presents another of those curious points of resemblance between the Hamite and Semite races which have induced modern ethnologists to derive the Arab from Africa. The curious custom amongst the Wanyamwezi of devising property to illegitimate children is not carried out in the succession to power. Where there are many sons, all, as might be expected, equally aspire to power; sometimes, however, of two brothers, one will consent to hold authority under the other. In several tribes, especially in Usukuma, the widow of a chief succeeds to his dignity in default of issue.

Punishments are simple in East Africa. The sar, vendetta or blood-feud, and its consequence, the diyat or weregeld, exist in germ, unreduced, as amongst the more civilised Arabs, to an artful and intricate system. But these customs are founded, unlike ours, upon barbarous human nature. Instinct prompts a man to slay the slayer of his kith and kin; the offence is against the individual, not the government or society. He must reason to persuade himself that the crime, being committed against the law, should be left to the law for notice; he wants revenge, and he cares nought for punishment or example for the prevention of crime. The Sultan encourages the payment of blood-money to the relatives of the deceased, or, if powerful enough, claims it himself, rather than that one murder should lead to another, and eventually to a chronic state of bloodshed and confusion. Thus, in some tribes the individual revenges himself, and in others he commits his cause to the chief. Here he takes an equivalent in cattle for the blood of a brother or the loss of a wife; there he visits the erring party with condign punishment. The result of such deficiency of standard is a want of graduation in severity; a thief is sometimes speared and beheaded, or sold into slavery after all his property has been extorted by the chief, the councillors, and the elders, whilst a murderer is perhaps only fined.

The land in East Africa is everywhere allodial; it does not belong to the ruler, nor has the dawn of the feudal system yet arisen there. A migratory tribe gives up its rights to the soil, contrary to the mortmain system of the Arab Bedouins, and, if it would return, it must return by force. The Sultan, however, exacts a fee from all immigrants settling in his territory.

The sources of revenue in East Africa are uncertain, desultory, and complicated. The agricultural tribes pay yearly a small per centage of grain; this, however, is the office of the women, who are expert in fraud. Neither sowing nor harvest can take place without the chief’s permission, and the issue of his order is regulated by his own interests. Amongst the hunting tribes, slain elephants become the hunter’s property, but the Sultan claims as treasure-trove a tusk of any animal found wounded or dead in his dominions, and in all cases the spoils of dead lions are crown property. The flesh of game is distributed amongst the elders and the ruling family, who also assert a claim to the cloth or beads purchased by means of the ivory from caravans. Some have abditaria and considerable stores of the articles most valued by barbarians. Throughout the slave-paths the chiefs have learned to raise revenue from the slaves, who thus bribe them to forbear from robbery. But whilst the stronger require large gifts without return, the weaker make trifling presents, generally of cattle or provisions, and expect many times the value in brass wire, cloth, and beads. The stranger may refuse these offerings; it is, however, contrary to custom, and as long as he can afford it he should submit to the imposition. Fiscs and fines are alarmingly frequent. If the monsoon-rains delay, the chief summons a Mganga to fix upon the obstructor; he is at once slain, and his property is duly escheated. The Sultan claims the goods and chattels of all felons and executed criminals, even in the case of a servant put to death by his master. In the more republican tribes the chief lives by the sweat of his slaves. Briefly, East Africa presents an instructive study of human society in its first stage after birth.

I will conclude this uninteresting chapter--attribute its dulness, gentle reader, to the effects of the climate and society of Konduchi--with a subject which strikes home to the heart of every Englishman, slavery.

The origin of slavery in East Africa is veiled in the glooms of the past. It is mentioned in the Periplus (chap. iii.), as an institution of the land, and probably it was the result of the ancient trade with southern Arabia. At present it is almost universal: with the exceptions of the Wahinda, the Watosi, and the Wagogo, all the tribes from the eastern equatorial coast to Ujiji and the regions lying westward of the Tanganyika Lake may be called slave-races. An Arab, Msawahili, and even a bondsman from Zanzibar, is everywhere called Murungwana or freeman. Yet in many parts of the country the tribes are rather slave-importers than exporters. Although they kidnap others, they will not sell their fellows, except when convicted of crime--theft, magic, murder, or cutting the upper teeth before the lower. In times of necessity, however, a man will part with his parents, wives, and children, and when they fail he will sell himself without shame. As has been observed, amongst many tribes the uncle has a right to dispose of his nephews and nieces.

Justice requires the confession that the horrors of slave-driving rarely meet the eye in East Africa. Some merchants chain or cord together their gangs for safer transport through regions where desertion is at a premium. Usually, however, they trust rather to soft words and kind treatment; the fat lazy slave is often seen stretched at ease in the shade, whilst the master toils in the sun and wind. The “property” is well fed and little worked, whereas the porter, belonging to none but himself, is left without hesitation to starve upon the road-side. The relationship is rather that of patron and client than of lord and bondsman; the slave is addressed as Ndugu-yango, “my brother,” and he is seldom provoked by hard words or stripes. In fact, the essence of slavery, compulsory unpaid labour, is perhaps more prevalent in independent India than in East Africa; moreover, there is no adscriptus glebæ, as in the horrid thraldom of Malabar. To this general rule there are terrible exceptions, as might be expected amongst a people with scant regard for human life. The Kirangozi, or guide, attached to the Expedition on return from Ujiji, had loitered behind for some days because his slave girl was too footsore to walk. When tired of waiting he cut off her head, for fear lest she should become gratis another man’s property.

In East Africa there are two forms of this traffic, the export and the internal trade. For the former slaves are collected like ivories throughout the length and breadth of the land. They are driven down from the principal depôts, the island of Kasenge, Ujiji, Unyanyembe, and Zungomero to the coast by the Arab and Wasawahili merchants, who afterwards sell them in retail at the great mart, Zanzibar. The internal trade is carried on between tribe and tribe, and therefore will long endure.

The practice of slavery in East Africa, besides demoralising and brutalising the race, leads to the results which effectually bar increase of population and progress towards civilisation. These are commandos, or border wars, and intestine confusion.

All African wars, it has been remarked, are for one of two objects, cattle-lifting or kidnapping. Some of the pastoral tribes--as the Wamasai, the Wakwafi, the Watuta, and the Warori--assert the theory that none but themselves have a right to possess herds, and that they received the gift directly from their ancestor who created cattle; in practice they covet the animals for the purpose of a general gorge. Slaves, however, are much more frequently the end and aim of feud and foray. The process of kidnapping, an inveterate custom in these lands, is in every way agreeable to the mind of the man-hunter. A “_multis utile bellum_,” it combines the pleasing hazards of the chase with the exercise of cunning and courage; the battue brings martial glory and solid profit, and preserves the barbarian from the listlessness of life without purpose. Thus men date from foray to foray, and pass their days in an interminable blood-feud and border war. A poor and powerful chief will not allow his neighbours to rest wealthier than himself; a quarrel is soon found, the stronger attacks the weaker, hunts and harries his cattle, burns his villages, carries off his subjects and sells them to the first passing caravan. The inhabitants of the land have thus become wolves to one another; their only ambition is to dispeople and destroy, and the blow thus dealt to a thinly populated country strikes at the very root of progress and prosperity.

As detrimental to the public interests as the border wars is the intestine confusion caused by the slave trade. It perpetuates the vile belief in Uchawi or black magic: when captives are in demand, the criminal’s relations are sold into slavery. It affords a scope for the tyranny of a chief, who, if powerful enough, will enrich himself by vending his subjects in wholesale and retail. By weakening the tie of family, it acts with deadly effect in preventing the increase of the race.

On the coast and in the island of Zanzibar the slaves are of two kinds--the Muwallid or domestic, born in captivity, and the wild slave imported from the interior.

In the former case the slave is treated as one of the family, because the master’s comfort depends upon the man being contented; often also his sister occupies the dignified position of concubine to the head of the house. These slaves vary greatly in conduct. The most tractable are those belonging to the Diwans and the Wasawahili generally, who treat them with the utmost harshness and contempt. The Arabs spoil them by a kinder usage; few employ the stick, the salib, or cross--a forked pole to which the neck and ankles are lashed--and the makantale or stocks, for fear of desertion. Yet the slave if dissatisfied silently leaves the house, lets himself to another master, and returns after perhaps two years’ absence as if nothing had occurred. Thus he combines the advantages of freedom and slavery. Moreover, it is a proverb among the Arabs that a slave must desert once in his life, and he does so the more readily as he betters his condition by so doing. The worst in all points are those belonging to the Banyans, the Indians, and other European subjects; they know their right to emancipation, and consult only their own interests and inclinations. The Muwallid or domestic slave is also used like the Pombeiro of West Africa. From Unyamwezi and Ujiji he is sent to traffic in the more dangerous regions--the master meanwhile dwelling amongst his fellow countrymen in some comfortable Tembe. This proceeding has greatly injured the commerce of the interior, and necessitates yearly lengthening journeys. The slave intrusted with cloth and beads suddenly becomes a great man; he is lavish in supporting the dignity of a fundi or fattore, and consulting nothing but his own convenience, he will loiter for six months at a place where he has been sent for a week. Thus it is that ivory sold in Unyamwezi but a dozen years ago at 10 lbs. for 1 lb. of beads now fetches nearly weight for weight. And this is a continually increasing evil. No caravan, however, can safely traverse the interior without an escort of slave-musketeers. They never part with their weapons, even when passing from house to house, holding that their lives depend upon their arms; they beg, borrow, or steal powder and ball; in fact they are seldom found unready. They will carry nothing but the lightest gear, the master’s writing-case, bed, or praying-mat; to load them heavily would be to ensure desertion. Contrary to the practice of the free porter, they invariably steal when they run away; they are also troublesome about food, and they presume upon their weapons to take liberties with the liquor and the women of the heathen.

The imported slaves again are of two different classes. Children are preferred to adults; they are Islamised and educated so as to resemble the Muwallid, though they are even somewhat less tame. Full-grown serfs are bought for predial purposes; they continue indocile, and alter little by domestication. When not used by the master they are left to plunder or to let themselves out for food and raiment, and when dead they are cast into the sea or into the nearest pit. These men are the scourge of society; no one is safe from their violence; and to preserve a garden or an orchard from the depredations of the half-starved wretches, a guard of musketeers would be required. They are never armed, yet, as has been recounted, they have caused at Zanzibar servile wars, deadly and lasting as those of ancient Rome.

Arabs declare that the barbarians are improved by captivity--a partial theory open to doubt. The servum pecus retain in thraldom that wildness and obstinacy which distinguish the people and the lower animals of their native lands; they are trapped, but not tamed; they become captives, but not civilised. However trained, they are probably the worst servants in the world; a slave-household is a model of discomfort. The wretches take a trouble and display an ingenuity in opposition and disobedience, in perversity, annoyance, and villany, which rightly directed would make them invaluable. The old definition of a slave still holds good--“an animal that eats as much and does as little as possible.” Clumsy and unhandy, dirty and careless, he will never labour unless ordered to do so, and so futile is his nature that even the inducement of the stick cannot compel him to continue his exertions; a whole gang will barely do the work of a single servant. He “has no end,” to use the Arab phrase: that is to say, however well he may begin, he will presently tire of his task; he does not and apparently he will not learn; his first impulse, like that of an ass, is not to obey; he then thinks of obeying; and if fear preponderate he finally may obey. He must deceive, for fraud and foxship are his force; when detected in some prodigious act of rascality, he pathetically pleads, “Am I not a slave?” So wondrous are his laziness and hate of exertion, that despite a high development of love of life he often appears the most reckless of mortals. He will run away from the semblance of danger; yet on a journey he will tie his pipe to a leaky keg of gunpowder, and smoke it in that position rather than take the trouble to undo it. A slave belonging to Musa, the Indian merchant at Kazeh, unwilling to rise and fetch a pipe, opened the pan of his musket, filled it with tobacco and fire, and beginning to inhale it from the muzzle blew out his brains. Growing confident and impudent from the knowledge of how far he may safely go, the slave presumes to the utmost. He steals instinctively, like a magpie: a case is quoted in which the gold spangles were stripped from an officer’s sword-belt whilst dining with the Prince of Zanzibar. The slave is almost always half-naked; whatever clothes he obtains from the master are pawned or sold in the bazar; hence he must pilfer and plunder almost openly for the means of gratifying his lowest propensities, drinking and intrigue. He seems to acquire from captivity a greater capacity for debauchery than even in his native wilds; he has learned irregularities unknown to his savage state: it is the brutishness of negroid nature brought out by the cheap and readily attainable pleasures of semi-civilisation. Whenever on moonlight nights the tapping of the tomtom responds to the vile squeaking of the fife, it is impossible to keep either a male or female slave within doors. All rendezvous at the place, and, having howled and danced themselves into happiness, conclude with a singularly disorderly scene. In the town of Zanzibar these “Ngoma” or dances were prohibited for moral reasons by the late Sayyid. The attachment of a slave to his master is merely a development of selfishness; it is a greater insult to abuse the Ahbab (patroon), than, according to Eastern fashion, the father and mother, the wife and sister. No slave-owner, however, praises a slave or relies upon his fidelity. The common expression is, “There is no good in the bondsman.”

Like the Somal, a merry and light-hearted race in foreign countries, but rendered gloomy and melancholy by the state of affairs at home, the negroid slaves greatly improve by exportation: they lose much of the surliness and violence which distinguish them at Zanzibar, and are disciplined into a kind of respect for superiors. Thus, “Seedy Mubarak” is a prime favourite on board an Indian steamer; he has also strength and courage enough to make himself respected. But “Seedy Mubarak” has tasted the intoxicating draught of liberty, he is in high good humour with himself and with all around him, he is a slave merely in origin, he has been adopted into the great family of free men, and with it he has identified all his interests. Eastern history preserves instances of the valour and faithfulness of bondsmen, as the annals of the West are fond of recording the virtues of dogs. Yet all the more civilised races have a gird at the negro. In the present day the Persians and other Asiatics are careful, when bound on distant or dangerous journeys, to mix white servants with black slaves; they hold the African to be full of strange childish caprices, and to be ever at heart a treacherous and bloodthirsty barbarian. Like the “bush-negroes” of Surinam, once so dangerous to the Dutch, the runaway slaves from Zanzibar have formed a kind of East African Liberia, between Mount Yombo and the Shimba section of the Eastern Ghauts. They have endangered the direct caravan-road from Mombasah to Usumbara; and though trespassing upon the territory of the Mwasagnombe, a sub-clan of the Wadigo, and claimed as subjects by Abdullah, the son of Sultan Kimwere, they have gallantly held their ground. According to the Arabs there is another servile republic about Gulwen, near Brava. Travellers speak with horror of the rudeness, violence, and cruelty of these self-emancipated slaves; they are said to be more dangerous even than the Somal, who for wanton mischief and malice can be compared with nothing but the naughtiest schoolboys in England.

The serviles at Zanzibar have played their Arab masters some notable tricks. Many a severe lord has perished by the hand of a slave. Several have lost their eyes by the dagger’s point during sleep. Curious tales are told of ingenious servile conspiracy. Mohammed bin Sayf, a Zanzibar Arab, remarkable for household discipline, was brought to grief by Kombo, his slave, who stole a basket of nutmegs from the Prince, and, hiding them in his master’s house, denounced him of theft. Fahl bin Nasr, a travelling merchant, when passing through Ugogo, nearly lost his life in consequence of a slave having privily informed the people that his patroon had been killing crocodiles and preserving their fat for poison. In both these cases the slaves were not punished; they had acted, it was believed, according to the true instincts of servile nature, and chastisement would have caused desertion, not improvement.

As regards the female slaves, the less said about them, from regard to the sex, the better: they are as deficient in honour as in honesty, in modesty and decorum as in grace and beauty. No man, even an Arab, deems the mother of his children chaste, or believes in the legitimacy of his progeny till proved.

Extensive inquiries into the subject lead to a conviction that it is impossible to offer any average of the price of slaves. Yet the question is of importance, as only the immense profit causes men thus to overlook all considerations of humanity. A few general rules may be safely given. There is no article, even horse-flesh, that varies so much in market-value as the human commodity: the absolute worth is small compared with the wants of the seller and the requirements and the means of the purchaser. The extremes range from six feet of unbleached domestics or a few pounds of grain in time of famine, to seventy dollars, equal to 15_l._ The slaves are cheapest in the interior, on account of the frequency of desertion: about Unyamwezi they are dearer, and most expensive in the island of Zanzibar. At the latter place during the last few years they have doubled in price: according to the Arabs, who regard the abolition of slavery with feelings of horror, this increase results from the impediments thrown in the way by the English; a more probable explanation may be found in the greater cheapness of money. At Zanzibar the price of a boy under puberty is from fifteen to thirty dollars. A youth till the age of fifteen is worth a little less. A man in the prime of life, from twenty-five to forty, fetches from thirteen to twenty dollars; after that age he may be bought from ten to thirteen. Educated slaves, fitted for the work of factors, are sold from twenty-five to seventy dollars, and at fancy prices. The price of females is everywhere about one-third higher than that of males. At Zanzibar the ushur or custom-dues vary according to the race of the slave: the Wahiao, Wangindo, and other serviles imported from Kilwa, pay one dollar per head, from the Mrima or maritime regions two dollars, and from Unyamwezi, Ujiji, and the rest of the interior three dollars. At the central depôt, Unyanyembe, where slaves are considered neither cheap nor dear, the value of a boy ranges between eight and ten doti or double cloths; a youth from nine to eleven; a man in prime, from five to ten; and past his prime from four to six. In some parts of the interior men are dearer than children under puberty. In the cheapest places, as in Karagwah and Urori, a boy costs three shukkahs of cloth, and three fundo or thirty strings of coral beads; a youth from ten to fifteen fundo; a man in prime from eight to ten; and no one will purchase an old man. These general notes must not, however, be applied to particular tribes: as with ivory and other valuable commodities, the amount and the description of the circulating medium vary at almost every march.

It was asserted by the late Colonel Hamerton, whose local knowledge was extensive, that the average of yearly import into the island of Zanzibar was 14,000 head of slaves, the extremes being 9000 and 20,000. The loss by mortality and desertion is 30 per cent. per annum; thus, the whole gang must be renewed between the third and fourth year.

By a stretch of power slavery might readily be abolished in the island of Zanzibar, and in due time, after the first confusion, the measure would doubtless be found as profitable as it is now unpalatable to the landed proprietors, and to the commercial body. A “sentimental squadron,” like the West African, would easily, by means of steam, prevent any regular exportation to the Asiatic continent. But these measures would deal only with effects, leaving the causes in full vigour; they would strike at the bole and branches, the root retaining sufficient vitality to resume its functions as soon as relieved of the pressure from without. Neither treaty nor fleet would avail permanently to arrest the course of slavery upon the seaboard, much less would it act in the far realms of the interior. At present the African will not work: the purchase of predial slaves to till and harvest for him is the great aim of his life. When a more extensive intercourse with the maritime regions shall beget wants which compel the barbarian, now contented with doing nothing and having nothing, to that individual exertion and that mutual dependency which render serfdom a moral impossibility in the more advanced stages of human society,--when man, now valueless except to himself, shall become more precious by his labour than by his sale, in fact an article so expensive that strangers cannot afford to buy him,--then we may expect to witness the extinction of the evil. Thus, and thus only can “Rachel, still weeping for her children,” in the evening of her days, be made happy.

Meanwhile, the philanthropist, who after sowing the good seed has sense and patience to consign the gathering of the crop to posterity, will hear with pleasure that the extinction of slavery would be hailed with delight by the great mass throughout the length and breadth of Eastern Africa. This people, “robbed and spoiled” by their oppressors, who are legionary, call themselves “the meat,” and the slave-dealers “the knife:” they hate and fear their own demon Moloch, but they lack unanimity to free their necks from his yoke. Africa still “lies in her blood,” but the progress of human society, and the straiter bonds which unite man with man, shall eventually rescue her from her old pitiable fate.