AFRICA AND THE AFRICANS. 



389 



of urging continually upon the public mind, 

 with every possible emphasis and reiteration, 

 the importance of its suppression. Livingstone 

 says : 



" "When endeavoring to give some account of 

 the slave-trade of East Africa it was necessary to 

 keep far within the truth, in order not to be thought 

 guilty of exaggeration " (a thing Livingstone always 

 abhorred) ; " but in sober seriousness the subject 

 does not admit of exaggeration. To overdraw its 

 evils is a simple impossibility. The sights I have 

 seen, though common incidents of the traffic, are 

 so nauseous, that I always strive to drive them 

 from my memory. In the case of most disagree- 

 able recollections I can succeed, in time, in con- 

 signing them to oblivion : but the slaving scenes 

 come back unbidden, and make me start up at 

 dead of night, horrified by their vividness." 



Sir Samuel Baker, in his "Albert Nyanza," 

 describes an attack made upon a village for slaves, 

 as follows : 



" Marching through the night, guided by their 

 negro hosts, they bivouac within an hour's march 

 of the unsuspecting village, doomed to an attack 

 about half an hour before the break of day. Quiet- 

 ly surrounding the sleeping villages, they fire the 

 grass huts in all directions and pour volleys of 

 musketry through the flaming thatch. Panic- 

 stricken, the unfortunate victims rush from the 

 burning dwellings, the men are shot down like 

 pheasants in a battue, while the women and chil- 

 dren are kidnapped and secured, the herds of cat- 

 tle are driven away, and the human victims lashed 

 together, forming a living chain, while a general 

 plunder of the premises ensues." 



In his " Ismailia," he says : 



" It is impossible to know the actual number 

 of slaves taken from Central Africa annually. . . . 

 The loss of life attendant upon the capture and 

 subsequent treatment of the slaves is frightful. 

 The result of this forced emigration, combined 

 with the insecurity of life and property, is the 

 withdrawal of the population from the infested dis- 

 tricts. The natives have the option of submission 

 to every insult, to the violation of their women 

 and the pillage of their crops, or they must either 

 desert their homes or seek independence in dis- 

 tant districts, or they must ally themselves with 

 their oppressors to assist in the oppression of other 

 tribes. Thus the seeds of anarchy are sown 

 throughout Africa. The result is horrible confu- 

 sion, distrust on all sides, treachery, devastation, 

 and ruin." » 



" Graves and numerous skeletons " (says Came- 

 ron) " testified to the numbers whose lives had been 

 sacrificed on this trying march, while slave clogs 

 und forks still attached to some bleached bones, 



1 "Ismailia," vol. i., pp. 4, 5. 



or lying by their side, gave only too convincing a 

 proof that the demon of the slave-trade still exerted 

 his influence in this part of Africa." l 



Schweinfurth, the German traveler, who trav- 

 eled for some time in charge of the Nile slavers, 

 and witnessed their diabolical proceedings, says 

 that the " traders of Darfoor and Kordofan are 

 as coarse, unprincipled, and villainous a set as 

 imagination can conceive." 



An avenging Nemesis must surely follow in 

 the footsteps of such unparalleled atrocity and 

 wickedness. / 



The Westminster Reviewer, with all these 

 facts before him, and after quoting from Living- 

 stone a statement which justly attributes the 

 backward condition of Africans to the disturbing 

 influence of the slave-trade, chooses to select the 

 very lowest tribes upon which to make his unfa- 

 vorable comments, and from which to infer the 

 character of the whole race, and seems to suppose 

 that he has clinched and riveted his disparaging 

 work by introducing the following sketch of the 

 negro as furnished to his hand by Sir Samuel 

 Baker: 



" Negroes seldom think of the future ; they 

 cultivate the ground at various seasons, but they 

 limit their crops to their natural wants ; therefore 

 an unexpected bad season reduces them to famine. 

 They grow a variety of cereals, which, with a min- 

 imum of labor, yield upon their fertile soil a large 

 return. Nothing would be easier than to double 

 the production, but this would entail the necessity 

 of extra store-room, which means extra labor. 

 Thus with happy indifference the native thinks 

 lightly of to-morrow. He eats and drinks while 

 his food lasts, and when famine arrives he endeav- 

 ors to steal from his neighbors .... nothing is 

 so distasteful to the negro as regular daily labor, 

 thus nothing that he possesses is durable. His 

 dwelling is of straw or wattles, his crops suffice for 

 support from hand to mouth ; and as his forefathers 

 worked only for themselves and not for posterity, 

 so also does the negro of to-day. Thus, without 

 foreign assistance, the negro a thousand years 

 hence will be no better than the negro of to-day, 

 as the negro of to-day is in no superior position to 

 that of his ancestors some thousand years ago." 



Such is the indictment against a whole race 

 drawn by an amateur philanthropist, who only 

 saw portions of the people in one corner of the 

 continent, where, by his own account, they are so 

 harassed and persecuted by the slave-traders that 

 progress is impossible. None more eloquently 

 or truthfully than Sir Samuel Baker has described 

 the horrors of the slave-trade and its blighting 



1 " Across Africa," vol. ii., p. 256. 



