TRADE AT ZANZIBAR. 417 



The principal traders, however, of Zanzibar seem to be the 

 Banyans. Many of these have accumulated great wealth, and 

 it is in their power to take advantage of the poorer natives who 

 come into their hands with their fruits or ivory, just as the rich 

 may wrong the poor anywhere. The negro is the laboring man 

 of the island, and the half-caste is the rascal. 



The particular line of trade which attracts the attention of 

 the European traveller most anxiously is that of the slave mar- 

 kets. It taxes the credulity of the most skeptical to accept the 

 statements of even the most reliable travellers concerning the 

 enormous profits which tempt so powerfully the unscrupulous 

 to this barbarous business. Mr. Stanley, who looked about him 

 with the eyes of an accomplished reporter for one of the most 

 careful journals of our time, has in his book a paragraph which 

 puts the matter most tellingly : " We will suppose," says he, 

 " for the sake of illustrating how trade with the interior is man- 

 aged, that the Arab conveys by his caravan $5000 worth of 

 goods into the interior. At Unyanyembe the goods are worth 

 $10,000; at Ujiji they are worth $15,000, or have trebled in 

 price. $7.50 will purchase a slave in the markets of Ujiji, 

 which will bring, in Zanzibar, $30. Ordinary men-slaves 

 may be purchased for $6 which would sell for $25 on the 

 coast. We will say he purchases slaves to the full extent of his 

 means. After deducting $1500 for expenses of carriage to 

 Ujiji and back — viz., $3500 — he would buy, at $7.50 each, four 

 hundred and sixty-four slaves, on which he would realize 

 $13,920 on an investment of $5000, or nearly $9000 net profit 

 for a single journey from Zanzibar to Ujiji." At the slave 

 market at Zanzibar, Dr. Livingstone found three hundred slaves 

 exposed for sale, the greater part of whom had come from Lake 

 Nyassa and the Shire river. One of the women remembered 

 hearing of his passing up the lake in a boat, but he found none 

 in the company whom he had seen before. The patience of the 

 man whose heart had been so long set for the lifting up of 

 Africa was hardly increased by the scenes which came so fre- 

 quently before him in these markets. He says that "those of 

 the slaves who were old enough to comprehend their situation 

 seemed greatly ashamed at being hawked about for sale. Their 

 teeth were examined, the cloth which they wore was raised up 



