838 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



see others. There are coal mines, iron mines, copper mines, and gold mines, 

 and all these lying there ready to be utilised. The vegetable products are 

 unrivalled in the whole world. 



" But this fair and vast region is rendered hideous by the continuance 

 and increase of the most infernal traffic that has ever existed in the world. 

 The slave trade I know well. I served for four years as Lieutenant on board 

 a man-of-war on the East Coast engaged in the suppression of the slave trade, 

 and during that' time I have been three weeks at a time with an open boat 

 without being out of it except on board the dhows. I know the work well, 

 and I think we captured more than one per cent., because I know that the 

 ship I was in took twenty-five dhows in ten days ; so that, supposing the 

 number of slaves imported from Zanzibar to be twenty thousand, the number 

 we took would give a considerably larger proportion. But this coast traffic, 

 of which we hear so much, and which England is doing her utmost to put 

 down, is nothing in comparison with that in the interior, and which, until 

 commerce is properly carried out, must still exist until either every man is a 

 slave, or there are no people left to make slaves of. The way this trade is 

 carried on in the interior is tending to the entire extermination of the popula- 

 tion. Mr. Cotterill has spoken only of the Arabs — the Arabs are the smallest 

 offenders. I know them right well. What are commonly called Arabs have 

 a great deal to do with it ; they are properly called Wonerima, or lower orders, 

 and the Wasuahili. These are very cruel in their slave trade, and obtain vast 

 numbers of slaves simply for the sake of the trade. But the better class of 

 Arabs are driven to obtain slaves in order to carry the enormous amounts of 

 ivory they obtain in the interior. 



" But when we come to other portions of the continent we find that a large 

 portion of the coast line is held under a merely nominal power by Portuguese, 

 who claim that they only wish to improve their position and do what is right. 

 But their power only extends along the coast line, and is then interrupted. 

 At Mozambique the Portuguese have to pay the natives for the farms they 

 occupy on the mainland — which they say is having the natives in their pay. 

 They block up a large portion of both coasts of Africa to all legitimate traffic ; 

 and people who call themselves Portuguese, but are not owned by the Portu- 

 guese foreign minister, or by the representative of that country in England, 

 spread far into the interior. These are not men — they are brutes. Taking 

 with them hordes of savages, whom they arm with guns, they march into 

 regions where not an ounce of powder is to be found, and make slaves of the 

 wretched inhabitants. Giving some big chief half a dozen guns they obtain 

 the assistance of some two hundred or three hundred men, and they easily 

 find some pretext for attacking some unfortunate village, probably that it has 

 not paid tribute. At night, when they are least expected, they attack it and 

 burn it down, shooting all the male population, or driving them into the jun- 



