398 
LOVE OF TRAFFIC. 
than work, as they leave off after two or three strokes 
to continue it. No people seem happier, yet they 
are nearly all slaves. Domestic slavery, however, 
is as different as possible from our horrible ideas of 
that state, or rather from the state to which the wants 
of civilization have brought it. In their native land 
it is not more irksome than servitude in ours. 
The strongest characteristic of the inhabitants of the 
interior of Africa is the love of traffic ; it is indeed the 
niling passion, which, if rightly developed, may become 
the instrument for raising them in the scale of nations. 
Every town has a market, generally once in four 
days; but the principal feature is in the large fairs 
held at different points on the river, about once a fort- 
night, for what may be called their foreign trade, or 
intercourse with neighbouring nations. They are pro- 
fessedly held sacred, whatever wars may be in the 
land ; and cheering, indeed, to humanity w'ould it be 
— in this hot-bed of violence and rapine, where every 
man’s hand is raised against his fellow, and where every 
one tries to enslave his neighbour — to know the 
existence of such a treve-dieu, devoted to the exercise of 
peaceful commercial intercourse. But they have had 
their neutrality frequently invaded by the avarice and 
tyranny of neighbouring princes, against whose cupi- 
dity or caprice there is no guarantee. The perti- 
nacity with which, notwithstanding these violations, the 
traders return, is a striking proof of the deeply-rooted 
