SLAVE YOKES. 
521 
are not unusually cruel. They were callous. Slaving 
hardened their hearts. 
When Syed, an old friend of mine, crossed Lualaba, he 
heal'd I was in the village, where a company of slave- 
traders were furiously assaulted for three days by justly 
incensed Bobemba. I would not fight, nor allow my people 
to fire if I saw them, because Bobemba bad been especially 
kind to me. Syed sent a party of his own people to invite 
me to leave the village and come to him. He showed him- 
self the opposite of hard-hearted ; but slavery hardens 
within, petrifies the feelings, is bad for the victims and ill 
for the victimizers. Once, it is said, a party of twelve, 
who had been slaves in their own country — Cunda or Conda, 
of which Cazembe is chief or general — were loaded with 
large, heavy yokes, which were forked trees, about three 
inches in diameter and seven or eight feet long, the neck 
inserted in the fork, and an iron bar driven across one end 
of the fork to the other and riveted to the other end, tied 
at night to the tree of ceiling of the hut, and the neck be- 
ing firm in the fork, and the slave held off from enloosing 
it, was excessively troublesome to the wearer, and when 
marching, two yokes were tied together by tree ends, and 
loads put on the slaves’ heads besides. A woman, having 
an additional yoke and load, and a child on her back, said 
to me in passing, “ They are killing me. If they would take 
off the yoke 1 could manage the load and the child ; but I 
shall die with three loads.” The one who spoke this did 
die ; poor little girl 1 Her child perished of starvation. I 
interceded some, but when unyoked, off they bounded into 
the long grass, and I was greatly blamed for not caring in 
presence of the owners of the property. After a day’s 
march, under a broiling vertical sun, with yokes and heavy 
loads, the strongest were exhausted. The party of twelve 
above mentioned, were sitting down singing and laughing. 
“ Hallo,” said I, “ these fellows take to it kindly. This must 
be the class for whom philosophers say slavery is the na- 
tural state,” and I went and asked them the cause of their 
44 * 
