CHAPTER XVI. 
THE SLAVER AND THE MISSIONARY IN THE 
CONGO RIVER. 
N the preceding pages some details have 
been given concerning domestic slavery 
upon the Congo River. Like poly¬ 
gamy, the system of barbarous and semi- 
barbarous races, it must be held provisional, but 
in neither case can we see any chance of present 
end. Should the Moslem wave of conquest, in a 
moral as well as a material form, sweep—and I am 
persuaded that it will sweep—from North Africa 
across the equator, the effect will be only to 
establish both these “ patriarchal institutions ” 
upon a stronger and a more rational basis. 
All who believe in “ progress ” are socially anti¬ 
slavers, as we all are politically Republicans. But 
between the two extremes, between despotism, in 
which society is regimented like an army, and 
liberty, where all men are theoretically free and 
