258 
AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION. 
and the slingers of the islands practise their art against 
him ; the Wakara poison anew their deadly arrows at 
sight of a canoe ; and each tribe, with rage and hate in 
its heart, remains aloof from the other. “ Verily, the 
dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of 
cruelty.” 
Oh for the hour when a band of philanthropic capi- 
talists shall vow to rescue these beautiful lands, and 
supply the means to enable the Gospel messengers to 
come and quench the murderous hate with which man 
beholds man in the beautiful lands around Lake 
Victoria ! 
I descended from the lofty height, the summit oi 
Musira Island, by another way, which disclosed, to me 
the character of the rocky island, and exposed to my 
view the precipitous walls of shale, rifted and indented 
by ages of atmos- 
pheric influences, 
that surround the 
island upon all 
sides but the 
After great difli- 
western. 
wooden bowls and PLATE. culty I succeeded in getting 
upon the top of a portion of 
an upper ledge that had fallen on the north-east corner 
and now formed a separate projection about thirty 
feet high. In a cavernous recess upon the summit of 
it, I discovered six human bodies in a state of decom- 
position, half covered with grass and debris of rock. 
One of the skulls showed the mark of a hatchet, which 
made me suspect that a tragedy had occurred here but 
a short time before. No doubt the horrific event took 
place on the island on the ground occupied by our camp, 
for there was no other spot where such a deed could 
have been wrought, and probably the victims were taken 
in canoes, and deposited in this hidden recess, that 
strangers might not be alarmed at the sight of the 
bodies, or of such evidence of violence as the hatchet- 
cleft skull. Probably, also, these strangers were mur- 
dered for their cargo of coffee or of butter by the 
