Savage Africa. 
35 
a fruitful theme for the pens and tongues of philanthropists, 
when pleading for liberty, and freedom for the slave ; but no 
worse horrors could be enacted than are daily enacted from 
the captured slaves driven down to the coast of Africa in 
these slave-stealing regions. The skeletons of those who 
have succumbed to their sufferings, line the roads ; invalids 
are ruthlessly speared, and the brains of children dashed 
out, whenever their weakness seems to hinder the march. 
The population along the route, if not utterly rooted out, 
fly scared from the coming destruction, and roost in trees, 
or hide in caves : fruitful fields sink into a wilderness state, 
and villages are burnt to ashes. One traveller records the 
following in his journal : " Passed three hundred slaves, 
journeying from the Nyassa to the Mozambique coast. All 
were in a wretched condition. One gang of lads and 
women chained together with iron neck-rings, was in a 
horrible state, their lower extremities coated with dry mud 
and torn with thorns, their bodies mere frameworks, and 
their skeleton limbs slightly stretched over with parchment- 
like skin. One wretched woman had been flung against 
a tree for slipping her rope, and came screaming to us for 
protection, with one eye half out, and her face and bosom 
streaming with blood." Dr. Livingstone frequently refers, 
with indignation, to the scenes which he witnessed in con- 
nection with this traffic. Sometimes it would be an entry 
in his journal, like this : " Found a number of slaves, with 
slave sticks, abandoned by their master from want of food ; 
they were too weak to speak, or say where they had come 
from." Slave sticks " are long pieces of wood, with clefts 
cut in them ; in these clefts are fastened the legs of the 
poor wretches, in order to prevent their escaping. At 
different times Livingstone records that he had passed the 
bodies of. murdered, or starved slaves ; and with the noble 
