CHAP. XII. SLAVE-TRADE AND FAMINE. 325 



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 famine and starvation had cut off 

 so many, that the remainder were too few to bury the 

 dead. The corpses we saw floating 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 culti- 

 vate, had their little patches robbed as successive 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 protected 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 

 may accept our own, as tinged with exaggeration; but 

 when our eyes beheld the last mere driblets of this cup 

 of woe, we for the first time felt that the enormous 

 wrongs inflicted on our fellow-men by slaving are beyond 

 exaggeration. 



Wherever we took a walk, human skeletons were seen 

 in every direction, and it was painfully interesting to ob- 

 serve 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 



