HORRORS OF THE TRADE IN SLAVES. 441 



liverance comes, will he not avenge the wrongs which he has 

 witnessed ? 



The marks of the dreadful trade became more and more fre- 

 quent as he penetrated the Waiyau country. They had hardly 

 released Akosakone, when they passed a slave woman shot or 

 stabbed through the body, and lying in the path. A group of 

 men stood about a hundred yards off on one side, and another 

 group of women on the other ; they said this cruel murder had 

 just been committed by an Arab who passed by, in his anger at 

 losing the price he had paid for her, when he saw that she could 

 walk no farther. The head men of the villages seemed greatly 

 troubled and alarmed when they were told of so many dead 

 bodies of their people, who had been killed by the slavers, and 

 were not blind to the reasoning of Livingstone when he at- 

 tempted to show them that those who sold these poor creatures 

 to the Arabs were sharers with them in the guilt of these mur- 

 ders. As the party came nearer Mtarika's place, the country 

 became more mountainous, and the land, sloping for a mile down 

 to the south bank of the Rovuma, supports a large population. 

 Some were making new gardens by cutting down trees and 

 piling the branches for burning; others had stored up large 

 quantities of grain and were moving it to a new locality, but 

 •they were all so well supplied with calico (Merikano) that they 

 would not look at Dr. Livingstone's; the market was, in fact, 

 glutted by slavers from Quiloa (Kilwa). On asking why peo- 

 ple were seen tied to trees to die as we had seen them, they gave 

 the usual answer that the Arabs tie them thus and leave them 

 to perish, because they are vexed, when the slaves can walk no 

 farther, that they have lost their money by them. The path was 

 almost strewed with slave-sticks, and though the people denied 

 it, Livingstone suspected that they made a practice of following 

 slave caravans and cutting off the sticks from those who fall out 

 in the march, and thus stealing them. By selling them again 

 they might get additional quantities of cloth. Some asked for 

 gaudy prints, of which he had none, because he knew that the 

 general taste of the Africans of the interior is for strength 

 rather than show in what they buy. 



These people were, however, so well supplied with white 

 calico by the slave-traders that it was found to be a drug in the 



