30 
Central Africa. 
tribes seem to have a similar legend — only Kintu is called 
Unkulunkulu. He is by them, represented as being lost, 
and there is a curious custom among some of them, of 
crying for the lost Unkulunkulu. From these, and other 
similar traditions, it would seem that at one time a religious 
faith must have prevailed over a great part of Africa ; and 
that, amid all these superstitions, idolatrous or sacrificial 
customs, legends, and tales, there is some faint belief in the 
existence of a God, in some form, and somewhere. It is, 
perhaps, another form of the Athenian worship of the 
" unknown God " ; only, in cultured Athens, this belief 
ran side by side with learning, poetry, and science, while 
in Africa it is co-existent with murder, bloodshed, cruelty, 
rapine, and degradation. 
Among the curses of Africa, that of the slave-trade is 
first and most disastrous. No sketch of the condition of 
the natives would be complete without a reference to it. 
Slavery has existed in Africa from the very earliest times, 
and constitutes what Livingstone strikingly called " an open 
sore of the world.'' We have to thank this indefatigable 
missionary explorer for much information upon this point, 
as well as for unsparing effort to abolish the practice. It is 
estimated, by competent authorities, that from half a million 
to a million of lives are annually sacrificed in the slave- 
trade, in Central Africa alone ; but this estimate must be 
enormously increased if we take the whole of Africa into 
consideration. In the north, and east, Mohammedanism 
rules supreme, and Mohammedanism enjoins the practice 
of slave-holding. Arabs are among the bitterest foes of 
the African, in that they greedily follow the occupation 
of slave-dealer, and by so doing, inflict untold sufferings 
upon the populations among which they roam. The 
region of the Nile has long been a favourite one for 
