496 Wanderings in Eastern Africa. 
on a woman becomes so weak and emaciated that she 
cannot continue the march, so her child being taken 
from her arms, and committed to the charge of another 
before her eyes, she is disconnected, and, with the 
coarsest abuse for interrupting the march of the 
subHme cortege^ (?) she, too, is left behind. Or a 
mother, by dint of an almighty love for her child, 
holds out with superhuman strength ; she will not 
give way ; but, unable to supply the child with the 
necessary nutriment, the little one dies ; he becomes 
a useless incumbrance, and despite the mother's 
shrieks and the hot, scalding tears that course their 
way down her swarthy cheeks, he is torn from her 
arms, and is tossed aside into the tall grass as if he 
were a dog. At night the hyaenas make a meal of all 
three ! 
Next come the terrors of the middle passage, upon 
which it is not necessary to dwell at any length, after 
the descriptions given by Captains Sulivan and 
Colomb. All that was said by Sir T. Fowell Buxton 
in his masterly work upon this phase of the subject, 
in regard to the western traffic, is equally true of 
this in the east. Slaves are packed in the miserable 
native craft like herrings in a barrel, and are treated 
worse than if they were brutes. I have seen vessels 
in the harbours so crowded — the people standing — as 
to appear like an immovable mass ; the sailors having 
literally to elbow their way from stem to stern. 
Think of such a freight of men, women, and children 
in such a vessel for days, and often for a whole month, 
at sea ! Think of them packed away in the hold, 
half starved, disease rife among them, rolling in filth, 
writhing in pain, and actually dying together in 
