Chap. XIII. crowding of refugees. 365 



slaves across the Lake by means of two boats, which we 

 saw returning from a trip in the afternoon. As he did 

 not know of our intention to visit him, we came upon 

 several gangs of stout young men slaves, each secured by 

 the neck to one common chain, waiting for exportation, 

 and several more in slave-sticks. These were all civilly 

 removed before our interview was over, because Juma 

 knew that we did not relish the sight. 



When Ave met the same Arabs in 1861, they had but 

 few attendants : according to their own account, they had 

 now, in the village and adjacent country, 1500 souls. It 

 is certain that tens of thousands had flocked to them for 

 protection, and all their power and influence must be 

 attributed to the possession of guns and gunpowder. This 

 crowding of refugees to any point where there is a hope 

 for security for life and property is very common in this 

 region, and the knowledge of it made our hopes beat high 

 for the success of a peaceful Mission on the shores of the 

 Lake. The rate, however, in which the people here will 

 perish by the next famine, or be exported by Juma and 

 others, will, we fear, depopulate those parts which we 

 have just described as crowded with people. Hunger will 

 ere long compel them to sell each other. An intelligent 

 man complained to us of the Arabs often seizing slaves, to 

 whom they took a fancy, without the formality of pur- 

 chase ; but the price is so low — from two to four yards of 

 calico — that one can scarcely think this seizure and ex- 

 portation without payment worth their while. The boats 

 were in constant employment, and, curiously enough, Ben 

 Habib, whom we met at Linyanti in 1855, had been taken 

 across the Lake, the day before our arrival at this Bay, on 

 his way from Sesheke to Kilwa, and we became acquainted 

 with a native servant of the Arabs, called Selele Saidallah, 

 who could speak the Makololo language pretty fairly from 

 having once spent some months in the Barotse Valley. 



