THE SLAVE-TKADE. 575 



great champion of Africa's oppressed millions an insight into 

 the trade which he so despised, which he could never have had 

 without that dreadful experience ; and if the kindness which he 

 received personally at the hands of some of those engaged in it 

 moved him to gentler judgment of the men, the horrors of their 

 traffic, revealed every day more clearly, only intensified his ab- 

 horrence of it, and aroused him to more unrelenting denunci- 

 ations of everything which encouraged it. He saw it in its 

 degrading influence on the minds of its victims; he saw it en- 

 couraging; the most unnatural cruelties where tenderness and 

 love should have been implanted ; he saw it confirming the most 

 oppressive superstitions and the most barbarous customs ; he saw 

 it cultivating the meanest selfishness, and filling the minds of 

 the people with suspicions ; he saw it fomenting dissensions and 

 creating wars ; he saw it, not content with the restrictions of its 

 own mock legitimacy, rising at times with unpardonable bar- 

 barity and desolating whole districts under color of some pre- 

 tended loss. Most gladly would he have gone on, and escaped 

 the dreadful spectacle which sickened his soul continually, but 

 he must inevitably have fallen a victim to the justly incensed 

 tribes who assembled from all quarters to avenge themselves on 

 the traders. 



He found himself in the midst of a regular war, without 

 being in the least responsible for it, and being utterly unable to 

 exert any influence for peace; the people had received so many 

 provocations, and endured so many wrongs, even according to 

 the low standards of justice which the traders themselves had 

 set up, that the Arabs and all their dependents were thoroughly 

 hated, and some recent barbarities of the parties sent out by 

 Mohamad Bogharib had been the fatal spark which set the 

 \who!e country ablaze. The doctor describes some of the scenes 

 of this war quite vividly : 



" On the 23d of November," he says, " we were assailed by a 

 crowd of Imbozhwa on three sides; we had no stockade, but the 

 men built one as fast as the enemy allowed, cutting down trees, 

 and carrying them to the line of defence, while others kept the as- 

 sailants at bay with their guns. Had it not been for the crowd of 

 Wanyamwezi we had, who shot vigorously with their arrows, and 

 occasionally chased the Imbozhwa, we should have been routed." 



