456 SLAVE-TKADE AND FAMINE. Chap. XXII. 



spread desolation, which the once pleasant Shire Valley now 

 presented. Instead of smiling villages and crowds of people 

 coming with things for sale, scarcely a soul was to be seen ; 

 and, when by chance one lighted on a native, his frame bore 

 the impress of hunger, and his countenance, the look of a 

 cringing broken - spiritedness. A drought had visited the 

 land after the slave-hunting panic swept over it. Had it 

 been possible to conceive the thorough depopulation which 

 had ensued, we should have avoided coming up the river. 

 Large masses of the people had fled down to the Shire, 

 only anxious to get the river between them and their 

 enemies. Most of the food had been left behind ; and fa- 

 mine and starvation had cut off so many, that the remainder 

 were too few to bury the dead. The copses we saw float- 

 ing down the river were only a remnant of those that had 

 perished, whom their friends, from weakness, could not bury, 

 nor over-gorged crocodiles devour. It is true that famine 

 caused a great portion of this waste of human life : but the 

 slave-trade must be deemed the chief agent in the ruin, 

 because, as we were informed, in former droughts all the 

 people flocked from the hills down to the marshes, which 

 are capable of yielding crops of maize in less than three 

 months, at any time of the year, and now they were 

 afraid to do so. A few, encouraged by the Mission in the 

 attempt to cultivate, had their little patches robbed as suc- 

 cessive swarms of fugitives came from the hills. Who can 

 blame these outcasts from house and home for stealing to 

 save their wretched lives, or wonder that the owners pro- 

 tected the little all, on which their own lives depended, 

 with club and spear? We were informed by Mr. Waller 

 of the dreadful blight which had befallen the once smiling 

 Shire Valley. His words, though strong, failed to impress 

 us with the reality. In fact, they were received, as some 



