454 



THE SLAVE RACES. 



Island would soon restore it to the Iguana and 

 the Turtle, its old inhabitants. 



The slave, on the other hand, has lost by not 

 being exported. It is the same in the Oil rivers 

 of West Africa, where in 1838 Sir T. Powell Bux- 

 ton proposed to substitute for illegal and-injurious, 

 harmless and profitable trade leading to 6 Christi- 

 anity, which would call forth the capabilities of 

 the soul, and elevate the savage mind.' It was 

 expected that at Benin, for instance, man would 

 become too valuable as a labourer to be sold as a 

 chattel. Unhappily the reverse took place ; man 

 became so cheap, that to work and to starve him 

 to death paid better than to feed him. A fresh 

 gang could be purchased for a few shillings, and 

 the price of provisions was of far more import- 

 ance than the value of life. The Buxtonian idea 

 was founded upon simple ignorance of Africa, 

 and upon the ill-judged assertion that slavery was 

 caused by foreigners. The internal wars, whose 

 main object is capturing serviles, are the normal 

 state of Blackland society ; they continued and 

 thev will continue, whether slavers touch the 

 coast or not. Briefly, the results to the captive are 

 now not sale, but slaughter or sacrifice in the in- 

 terior, and death by starvation upon the coast. 



When I visited Zanzibar, in 1857, the English 



