498 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



are tied together by their free ends, and loads put on the slaves' heads besides. 

 Women having in addition to the yoke and load a child on their back, have 

 said to me on passing, ' They are killing me ! If they would take off the yoke, 

 I could manage the load and child ; but I shall die with the loads.' One who 

 spoke this did die ; and the poor little girl, her child, perished of starvation. 

 I interceded for some, but, when unyoked, off they bounded into the long 

 grass, and I was greatly blamed for not caring to preserve the owner's pro- 

 perty. After a day's march under a broiling vertical sun, with yokes and 

 heavy loads, the strongest are exhausted. 



" The party of twelve above mentioned were sitting singing and laughing. 

 ' Hallo I ' said I, ' these fellows take to it kindly ; this must be the class for 

 whom philosophers say slavery is the natural state.' And I went and asked 

 the cause of their mirth. I had to ask the aid of their owner as to the mean- 

 ing of the word rukha, which usually means to fly or leap. They were using 

 it to express the idea of haunting, as a ghost, and inflicting disease and 

 death ; and the song was, ' Yes, we are going away to Manga (abroad in 

 white man's land) with yokes on our necks ; but we shall have no yokes in 

 death. And we shall return to haunt and kill you.' The chorus then struck 

 in with the name of the man who had sold each of them, and then followed 

 the general laugh, in which at first I saw no bitterness. Perembe, an old 

 man of at least one hundred-and-four years, had been one of the sellers. In 

 accordance with African belief, they had no doubt of being soon able, by 

 ghost power, to kill even him. Their refrain might be rendered — 



' Oh, oh, oh ! 

 Bird of freedom, oh ! 

 You sold me, oh, oh, oh ! 

 I shall haunt you, oh, oh, oh !' 



The laughter told not of mirth, but of tears of such as were oppressed, and 

 they had no comforter. ' He that is higher than the highest regardeth.' " 



No slave hunters or traders had ever entered the Manyema country until 

 about the time of Dr. Livingstone's visit. He was destined to see the first 

 horrors consequent upon their presence ; and his account of what he saw was 

 destined to be the prime agent in rousing the Government of this country to 

 attempt the complete extinction of the slave trade. To the Manyema, as they 

 had no market for it, " the value of ivory was quite unknown." As Living- 

 stone has already informed us, the natives readily produced the hitherto value- 

 less ivory, and handed the tusks over to the traders for a few brass or copper 

 ornaments. " I have seen," he says, " parties return with so much ivory, 

 that they carried it by three relays of hundreds of slaves. But even this 

 did not satisfy human greed. The Manyema were found to be terrified by 

 the report of guns : some, I know, believed them to be supernatural ; for 



