4o6 A JOURNEY IN 
better. Even in v/ar the only booty is the cattle of the 
enemy. 
How far to the northward the country, continues to be in- 
habited by free Kaffer tribes remains yet to be determined ; 
but the extent, it is to be feared, is iiot very great. It ap- 
pears that the Portugueze slave-merchants have at length 
elFected a communication across the continent, from Mosam- 
bique to their settlements of Congo and Loango on the 
opposite coast ; from which it may be inferred that the line 
of slavery extends at least as far to the southward as the 
t^ventieth degree on the eastern, and to the fifteenth or six- 
teenth on the western coast. It is probable, however, that 
in the central parts of Southern Africa the land of freedom 
may stretch much beyond the parallels where slavery prevails 
on the coast. The Barroloos, from the above account, cannot 
be placed to the southward of the tropic of Capricorn ; and it 
is not very probable that a nation having made such progress 
.as they are represented to have done, should border im-, 
mediately on a nation of slaves. Thus though SofFala, Mo- 
sambique, Quiloa, and Melinda, on the eastern coast, and 
Congo, Loango, Benguela, and Angola, on the western, have 
long been doomed to all the evils and horrors of slavery, yet 
it is possible that the Biri and Baroras of the charts, in the 
heart of the continent, may be a continuation of the same 
free and happy people as the Booshuanas and Barroloos, the 
former of whom extend easterly even to the bay of De la Goa, 
where the Portugueze have in vain endeavoured to introduce 
among them a traffic in slaves. Luckily for the Kaffer nation, 
neither the Portugueze on one side, nor the Cape boors on tlie 
