588 THE UJIJI ARABS. 



an idol, the tutelar deity ; it was the image of a human head 

 and shoulders, carved in wood, painted, the face white, and 

 staring black eyes. Before this image he noticed men and 

 women as they past bowing profoundly, as the Catholics do 

 when they pass the image of the Virgin. Innumerable customs 

 of respect and precaution grow out of their superstitions which 

 are seen cropping out daily. But we may detain the reader too 

 long with the natives, who are really little more conspicuous 

 than the people of many other tribes, in the village Ujiji, as Dr. 

 Livingstone found it. 



Among the foreigners, the doctor was more immediately 

 associated with the Arabs, and their agents. They were the 

 resident representatives of the outside world. The more promi- 

 nent of them seemed kind, after their ideas of kindness ; but 

 Aither by their dishonesty or their unpardonably bad manage- 

 ment he suffered distressing inconveniences and losses, and in 

 the one matter of most vital importance they failed him entirely. 

 For long years he had been as dead to his friends ; the world 

 had mourned his loss, only the more sanguine of the people 

 cherishing the hope of yet hearing of him as alive. And now 

 that he was at a point in regular intercourse with the coast his 

 heart bounded with delight in the hope of sending letters away 

 which would inform his friends and family of his existence, his 

 successes and his hopes. For days and weeks he labored over 

 these precious pages, but to his great sorrow he found that the 

 Arabs refused to send them, fearing, as he guessed, that he might 

 complain in them to the Zanzibar authorities of their conduct 

 among the tribes west of the lake ; and when at last he com- 

 mitted them to unwilling hands it turned out that he might as 

 well have consigned them to the flames ; for the word of such 

 men is nothing when they think their gains are involved : those 

 letters never saw the light. After months of experience among 

 them Dr. Livingstone was constrained to pronounce Ujiji a den 

 of the worst slave-traders, compared with whom those he had 

 been with in Urungu and Itawa were gentlemen. They were 

 the rivals of the Portuguese in cruelty and meanness. " Their 

 business," he says, " was not a trade but a system of consecutive 

 murders ; they go to plunder and kidnap , every trading trip is a 

 foray." They were continually concocting some villanous in- 

 vasion of the tribes unprovided with guns. 



