Chap. XIII. SERVITUDE COMPARATIVELY LIGHT. 203 



sionary now living with Moselekatse, finds the same system 

 prevailing among his Zulus or Matebele. He says that, 

 " the African slave, brought by a foray to the tribe, enjoys, 

 from the beginning, the privileges and name of a child, 

 and looks upon his master and mistress in every respect as 

 his new parents. He is not only nearly his master's equal, 

 but he may, with impunity, leave his master and go wherever 

 he likes within the boundary of the kingdom : although 

 a bondman or servant, his position, especially in Mosele- 

 katse's country, does not convey the true idea of a state 

 of slavery ; for, by care and diligence, he may soon become a 

 master himself, and even more rich and powerful than he who 

 led him captive." 



The practice pursued by these people, on returning from a 

 foray, of selling the captives to each other for corn or cattle, 

 might lead one to imagine that slavery existed in all 

 its intensity among the native Africans ; but Mr. Thomas, 

 observing, as we have often done, the actual working of the 

 system, says very truly, " Neither the punctuality, quickness, 

 thoroughness, nor amount of exertion is required by the 

 African as by the European master. In Europe the difficulty 

 is want of time ; in Africa, what is to be done with it.'* 

 Apart from the shocking waste of life, which takes place in 

 these and all slave forays, their slavery is not ,so repulsive 

 as it always becomes in European hands. It is perhaps a 

 failing in a traveller to be affected with a species of home- 

 sickness, so that the mind always turns from the conditions 

 and circumstances of the poor abroad to the state of the 

 lonely in our native land ; but so it is. When we see with 

 how much ease the very lowest class here can subsist, we 

 cannot help remembering, with sorrow, with what difficulty 

 our own poor can manage to live — with what timid eagerness 



