104 LIVINGSTONE'S LAST JOURNALS. [Chap. IV. 



addressed, it looks more like reading- or speaking to the 

 book : kneeling and praying with eyes slnvt is better than 

 our usual way of holding Divine service. 



We had a long discussion about the slave-trade. The 

 Arabs have told the chief that our object in capturing slavers 

 is to get them into our own possession, and make them of 

 our own religion. The evils which Ave have seen- — the skulls,, 

 the ruined villages, the numbers who perish on the way to 

 the coast and on the sea, the wholesale murders committed 

 by the Waiyau to build up Arab villages elsewhere — these 

 things Mukate often tried to turn off with a laugh, but 

 our remarks are safely lodged in many hearts. Next day, 

 as we went along, our guide spontaneously delivered their 

 substance to the different villages along our route. Before 

 we reached him, a headman, in convoying me a mile or 

 two, whispered to me, " Speak to Mukate to give his forays 

 up." 



It is but little we can do, but we lodge a protest in the 

 heart against a vile system, and time may ripen it. Their 

 great argument is, "What could we do without Arab cloth?" 

 My answer is, "Do what you did before the Arabs came 

 into the country." At the present rate of destruction of 

 population, the whole country will soon be a desert. 



An earthquake happened here last year, that is about the 

 end of it or beginning of this (the crater on the Grand 

 Comoro Island smoked for three months about that time) ;. 

 it shook all the houses and everything, but they observed, 

 no other effects.* No hot springs are known here. 



* Earthquakes are by no means uncommon. A slight shock was felt 

 in 18G1 at Magomero ; on asking the natives if they knew the cause of it, 

 they replied that on one occasion, after a very severe earthquake which 

 shook boulders off the mountains, all the wise men of the country assem- 

 bled to talk about it and came to the following conclusion, that a star had 

 fallen from heaven into the sea, and that the bubbling caused the whole 

 earth to rock ; they said the effect was the same as that caused by throwing, 

 a red-hot stone into a pot of water. — Ed. 



