Chap. XVIf. DEABNESS OF SLAVE LABOUR. 339 



returned from a trading expedition to Moselekatse's country. 

 They bad taken in-land a thousand muskets and a large 

 quantity of gunpowder; these being, they said, the only 

 articles Moselekatse cares to purchase. They started on 

 their journey back, with ivory, ostrich feathers, a thousand 

 sheep and goats, and thirty head of fine cattle. Moselekatse 

 sent, in addition, as a token that the traders and he had 

 parted good friends, a splendid white bull to the Comman- 

 dant. The ostrich feathers had been packed in reeds, a fire 

 broke out in the camp one night, and most of them were 

 burned. On their way the cattle had to pass through a 

 tsetse country, and they all died from the effects of the bite. 

 The white bull perished within two days of Senna; six 

 hundred of the sheep and goats had been eaten, either 

 because they became lame, or because the drivers were 

 hungry. The Commandant having an attack of fever was 

 unable to calculate his losses, but intended to imprison the 

 slaves who, as usual, thought more of their own comfort 

 than of their master's gain. Slave labour is certainly very 

 dear; for an Englishman with two wagons and ten people 

 could have made a more profitable trip to Moselekatse's — 

 from the much greater distances of Natal or the Cape — than 

 was made by these hundreds of slaves. 



When we met Sequasha, he confessed to having already 

 amassed 800 arrobas or 25,600 lbs, of ivory, the most of it 

 purchased for a mere trifle. His comrade had about half that 

 amount, or 12,800 lbs. When Sequasha returned to Tette, 

 in the following year, he was cast into prison in the Fort. He 

 had brought down several tons of ivory, and was soon a free 

 man again. The ostensible reason for his imprisonment was 

 the disorders he had been guilty of in the interior ; but this 

 was only like the customary manipulation by which, in pisci- 

 culture, the salmon is made to yield her spawn, before she 



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