412 DESOLATION ON THE SHIRE. 



people had been killed, kidnapped, and forced to flee from their 

 villages. There were a few wretched survivors in a village 

 above the Ruo ; but the majority of the population was dead. 

 The sight and smell of dead bodies were everywhere. Many 

 persons lay beside the path, where in their weakness they had 

 fallen and expired. Ghastly living forms of boys and girls, 

 with dull, dead eyes, were crouching beside some of the huts. 

 A few more miserable days of their terrible hunger, and they 

 would be with the dead. Words could not convey an adequate 

 idea of the scene of wide-spread desolation which the once pleas- 

 ant valley of the Shire presented. Instead of- smiling villages 

 and crowds of people coming with things for sale, scarcely a 

 soul was to be seen ; and when by chance one lighted on a 

 native, his frame bore the impress of hunger, and his counte- 

 nance the Took of a cringing broken-spirited ness. A drought 

 had visited the land after the slave-hunting panic swept over it. 

 Large masses of people had fled down to the Shire, only 

 anxious to get the river between them and their enemies. Most 

 of the food had been left behind ; and famine and starvation had 

 cut off so many that the remainder were too few to bury the 

 dead. The corpses seen floating down the river were only a 

 remnant of those that had perished, whom their friends, from 

 weakness, could not bury, nor over-gorged crocodiles devour. 

 It is true that famine caused a great portion of this waste of 

 human life ; but the slave-trade was deemed the chief agent in 

 the ruin. The few wretched survivors were overpowered by an 

 apathetic lethargy. They attempted scarcely any cultivation, 

 which, for people so given to agriculture as they are, was very 

 remarkable; they were seen daily devouring the corn-stalks 

 which had sprung up in the old plantations, and which would, 

 if let alone, have yielded corn in a month. They could not be 

 aroused from their lethargy. Famine benumbs all the facul- 

 ties. The effort was made to induce some to exert themselves 

 to procure food, but failed. They had lost all their former 

 spirit, and with lacklustre eyes, scarcely meeting those of their 

 friends, and in whining tones, replied to every proposition for 

 their benefit—" No, no ! " ("Ai ! ai ! ") 



Human skeletons were seen in every direction, and it was 

 painfully interesting to observe the different postures in which 



