PORTUG UESE R JJLE IN AFRICA. 869 



would be far better for the country if tbe energies of its people were utilised 

 in some profitable form instead of being wasted in that way. In some places 

 the natives themselves trafficked in slaves and the price of everything was 

 regulated by the number of slaves it would fetch. In Nyangue, for instance, 

 a town on the Lualaba, a slave was worth four goats, and a canoe was worth 

 five slaves ; a slave was supposed to be equal to a sovereign, a goat to five 

 shillings, and so on. Slaves, in fact, were the standard of currency among 

 the natives, and this fact alone showed how deeply it was engrained in the 

 African nature. The products of Central Africa were of inexhaustible rich- 

 ness, and varied in character ; there were both vegetable and mineral products 

 that would well repay the trader. In his opinion, no stations could be formed 

 to open up Africa without the commercial element instantly taking advantage 

 of them. It was, therefore, to be hoped that missionary enterprise would not 

 look upon the commercial element as something in the way. Wherever large 

 bodies of men went, there must be a certain amount of evil : their task was 

 to render the evil as little as possible. 



Trade must be opened in Central Africa; it would be opened sooner or 

 later, and people who went there as missionaries must make use of that trade, 

 instead of setting themselves in antagonism to it. When a few stations had 

 been opened up they might have commercial and mission stations working 

 side by side. If they were properly organised the commercial element might 

 do no harm ; but if that element was ignored or set aside it would be sure to 

 put itself in antagonism to mission labours, and do incalculable harm. On 

 the other hand, it would be to the interest of the commercial element to work 

 in harmony with the missionary. The more civilised the natives became, 

 the greater consumers of European produce they would also become ; there- 

 fore the commercial world should do all in its power to assist the missionary 

 in civilising Africa. The two must work together, and not in antagonism to 

 each other. 



Great portions of the coast of Africa were at present closed by the Portu- 

 guese rule. The Portuguese had their stations by which they maintained 

 nominal possession of large lines of coast, and they even claimed large tracts 

 of the interior. Mozambique had been in their hands since the days of Vasco 

 di Grama, but though they never found out the Nyanza they now wanted to 

 say it was theirs. By a suicidal system of differential duties on foreign goods 

 they had contrived to drive away trade from their territories. Zanzibar, 

 which, under the Portuguese, had scarcely any trade with the interior, now 

 absorbed all that used to go through Mozambique. Arabian ideas of custom 

 and trade were certainly not up to those of the nineteenth century ; and yet the 

 Mahometan rulers of Zanzibar were in advance of the Christian governors 

 of Mozambique. If they could open the country to Benguela in the interior, 

 and get a road one hundred miles further, they would reach a high plateau 



