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THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



trained, they are probably the worst servants in the 

 world ; a slave-household is a model of discomfort. The 

 wretches take a trouble and display an ingenuity in 

 opposition and disobedience, in perversity, annoyance, 

 and villany, which rightly directed would make them 

 invaluable. The old definition of a slave still holds 

 good— "an animal that eats as much and does as little 

 as possible." Clumsy and unhandy, dirty and careless, 

 he will never labour unless ordered to do so, and so 

 futile is his nature that even the inducement of the stick 

 cannot compel him to continue his exertions ; a whole 

 gang will barely do the work of a single servant. He 

 " has no end," to use the Arab phrase : that is to say, 

 however well he may begin, he will presently tire of his 

 task ; he does not and apparently he will not learn ; his 

 first impulse, like that of an ass, is not to obey ; he then 

 thinks of obeying ; and if fear preponderate he finally 

 may obey. He must deceive, for fraud and foxship are 

 his force ; when detected in some prodigious act of ras- 

 cality, he pathetically pleads, "Am I not a slave ?" So 

 wondrous are his laziness and hate of exertion, that 

 despite a high development of love of life he often appears 

 the most reckless of mortals. He will run away from 

 the semblance of danger; yet on a journey he will tie 

 his pipe to a leaky keg of gunpowder, and smoke it in 

 that position rather than take the trouble to undo it. 

 A slave belonging to Musa, the Indian merchant at 

 Kazeh, unwilling to rise and fetch a pipe, opened the 

 pan of his musket, filled it with tobacco and fire, and 

 beginning to inhale it from the muzzle blew out his 

 brains. Growing confident and impudent from the 

 knowledge of how far he may safely go, the slave 

 presumes to the utmost. He steals instinctively, like 

 a magpie : a case is quoted in which the gold spangles 



