458 SKELETONS, THEIR POSITIONS. Chap. XXII. 



seen in every direction, and it was painfully interest- 

 ing to observe the different postures in which the poor 

 wretches had breathed their last. A whole heap had been 

 thrown down a slope behind a village, where the fugitives 

 often crossed the river from the east ; and in one hut 

 of the same village no fewer than twenty drums had been 

 collected, probably the ferryman's fees. Many had ended 

 their misery under shady trees — others under projecting 

 crags in the hills — while others lay in their huts, with 

 closed doors, which when opened disclosed the mouldering 

 corpse with the poor rags round the loins — the skull 

 fallen off the pillow — the little skeleton of the child, that 

 had perished first, rolled up in a mat between two large 

 skeletons. The sight of this desert, but eighteen months 

 ago a well peopled valley, now literally strewn with human 

 bones, forced the conviction upon us, that the destruction 

 of human life in the middle passage, however great, con- 

 stitutes but a small portion of the waste, and made us feel 

 that unless the slave-trade — that monster iniquity, which 

 has so long brooded over Africa — is put down, lawful com- 

 merce cannot be established. 



We believed that, if it were possible to get a steamer upon 

 the Lake, we could by her means put a check on the slavers 

 from the East Coast ; and aid more effectually still in the 

 suppression of the slave-trade, by introducing, by way of the 

 Eovuma, a lawful traffic in ivory. We therefore unscrewed 

 the Lady Nyassa at a rivulet about five hundred yards 

 below the first cataract, and began to make a road over the 

 thirty-five or forty miles of land portage, by which to carry 

 her up piecemeal. After mature consideration, we could not 

 imagine a more noble work of benevolence, than thus to 

 introduce light and liberty into a quarter of this fair earth, 

 which human lust has converted into the nearest possible 



