XV CRUEL TREATMENT OF SLAVES 313 



was a tall, spare man, well made, with regular 

 features, dark olive complexion, and fine black eyes. 

 Both now and upon my return from the Manica 

 country he treated me with the greatest kindness, 

 for which I shall ever feel grateful. He was, how- 

 ever, a slave-trader, and treated the natives with 

 great severity. As he expressed it, " Negro diablo ; 

 Africa inferno " (A black man is a devil ; Africa is 

 hell). 



November 30//;. — Brought all our goods across 

 from the northern bank of the river to Mendonc^^a's 

 island, Cassoko, but lelt the donkeys in charge of 

 Franz and my Kafirs on the northern bank. The 

 first thing that jarred against my prejudices as an 

 Englishman the next morning was the sight of ten 

 Batonga women, just captured in the last raid, all 

 chained together. Each had an iron ring round her 

 neck, and there was about five feet of iron chain 

 between each ; some of them were women with little 

 babies on their backs, others young unmarried women. 

 Whilst I was here they were never loosened one from 

 another, but everv morning they were sent over in a 

 large canoe to the southern shore, to hoe in a corn-field 

 all day in a row, all chained together ; at night they 

 were locked up, still all chained together, in a large, 

 square sort of barn. From the verandah depended 

 three raw hippopotamus-hide sjamboks, the lower part 

 of each dyed black with blood. During my stay 

 here, another little Portuguese, a fair-haired, light- 

 complexioned man, Manoel Diego by name, also an 

 old soldier from the Zambesi battalion, visited 

 Mendon^a ; he had with him two very good-looking 

 young Batonga girls (victims of the last raid), one 

 about thirteen or fourteen years of age, the other 

 about ten, the best-looking specimens I had yet seen 



