The Slave-trade

T could not have been easy for Dr. Livingstone to take I up his work again, but how he was able to do it at all may be inferred from these words, written at the time to his friend, Rev. Mr. Waller, of the Universities’ Mission: “Thanks for your kind sympathy. In return, I say, cherish exalted thoughts of the great work you have undertaken. It is a work which, if faithful, you will look back on with satisfaction while the eternal ages roll on their everlasting course. The devil will do all he can to hinder you by efforts from without and from within, but remember Him who is with you, and will be with you alway.”

As soon as he was able to brace himself for his work, he undertook the task of helping to put the Lady Nyassa together, and to launch her. This was achieved about the last of June, 1862, to the great astonishment of the natives, who could not comprehend how iron should float. This was an excellent steamboat, and could she have been got to the lake would have done well. But unhappily the rainy season had passed, and this could not now be accomplished until December. Here was another great disappointment. In the meantime Livingstone again took up the explorations in which he had been engaged when he went with Bishop Mackenzie to help him settle. He hoped to find a water-way to Nyassa beyond the dominion of the Portuguese, but failed. It appeared best to reach the lake by the Zambesi and Shiré, but it was not until early in 1863 that they were able to renew the ascent of these rivers, with the Lady Nyassa in tow.

Dr. Livingstone had seen from the very outset the necessity of securing the cooperation of the Portuguese, who were in possession of the coast at the mouth of the Zambesi, and he had succeeded in obtaining from the king of Portugal the amplest assurances of sympathy and aid. Public instructions had been given to all Portuguese officials in Africa that all needful help should be given him. The actual policy of these officials was, however, quite the reverse of this, and they seemed bent upon thwarting in every possible way his noble endeavors to suppress that infamous traffic which brought them their wealth. Still more than this, it seemed as if his labors, instead of suppressing this terrible slave-trade, were actually helping it forward. As fast as he opened up the country slave-traders followed in his track, sometimes gaining the confidence of the unsuspecting natives by saying that they were Livingstone’s children!

Now as the exploring party ascended the river the desolation was heart-breaking. Corpses floated past them in such numbers that the paddle-wheels had to be cleared from them every morning. “ Wherever we took a walk, human skeletons were seen in every direction, and it was painfully interesting to observe the different postures in which the poor wretches had breathed their last... Many had ended their misery under shady trees, others under projecting crags in the hills, while others lay in their huts with closed doors, which when opened disclosed the mouldering corpse with the poor rags around the loins, the skull fallen off the pillow, the little skeleton of the child, that had perished first, rolled up ina mat between two large ske‘etons. The sight of this desert, but eighteen months ago a well-peopled valley, now literally strewn with human bones, forced the conviction upon us that the destruction of human life in the middle passage, however great, constitutes but a small portion of the waste, and made us feel that unless the slave-trade — that monster iniquity which has so long brooded over Africa — is put down, lawful commerce cannot be established.”

At first Dr. Livingstone had been somewhat inclined to think that the enormities of the slave-trade were sometimes exaggerated. - Now he was convinced that they were “beyond exaggeration.”

Sometimes he was able to set the captives free, as on the journey to Loanda, which was begun by a blessed act of humanity, as he boldly summoned a trader to release a band of captives, so that eighteen souls were restored to freedom who else would have been miserable slaves. On another occasion, also previous to this time, he and his companions had rescued a slave-party of manacled men, women and chil dren. Each man had his neck in the fork of a stout stick six or seven feet long, and kept in by an iron rod riveted at both ends across the throat. With a saw one by one the men were sawed out into freedom. Many of the party were children about five years old or even less. Two women had been shot the day before for attempting to untie the thongs, in order that the rest might be intimidated; one woman had had her infant’s brains knocked out because she could not carry both it and her load, and a man was despatched with an axe because he had broken down with fatigue. Eightyfour, chiefly women and children, were set free; and on being told that they might go where they pleased, or remain with their liberators, they all chose to stay; and the bishop wisely attached them to the mission, then just opened, to be educated as members of a Christian family. In this way a great difficulty in the establishment of a mission was overcome, for years are usually required to instil such confidence into the natives’ minds as to induce them — in any large numbers at least — to submit to the guidance of strangers.

But while the release of slaves on their way to the coast was sometimes effected, more frequently either it could not be accomplished, or it was felt to be unwise, as the helpless victims of the slave-agent were likely, if rescued, to fall again into his pitiless hands, when their last state would inevitably be worse than their first.

A few extracts from Livingstone’s books, The Zambesi and its Tributaries and the Last Journals, will give added reason for his intense feeling on this subject:

“The assertion has been risked, because no one was in a condition to deny it, that the slave-trade was like any other branch of commerce, subject to the law of supply and demand, and that therefore it ought to be free. From what we have seen, it involves so much of murder in it as an essential element, that it can scarcely be allowed to remain in the catalogue of commerce, any more than garroting, thuggee, or piracy.”

“June 26th, 1866.— We passed a slave woman shot or stabbed through the body, and lying on the path. It was said an Arab who passed early that morning had done it in anger at losing the price he had given for her, because she was unable to walk any longer.”

“June 27th.— To-day we came upon aman dead from starvation, as he was very thin. One of our men wandered and found a number of slaves with slave-sticks on, abandoned by their master for want of food. They were too weak to be able to speak or say where they had come from; some were quite young.”

‘Not more than one in five ever reach the ‘kind masters’ in Cuba and elsewhere, whom, according to slave-owners’ interpretation of Scripture, Providence intended for them.”

“We had a long discussion about the slave-trade. The Arabs have told the chief that our object in capturing slaves is to get them into our own possession and make them of our own religion. The evils which we have seen, the skulls, the ruined villages, the numbers who perish on the way to the coast and on the sea, the wholesale murders committed by the Waiyau to build up Arab villages elsewhere — these things Mukaté often tried to turn off with a laugh, but our remarks are safely lodged in many hearts. Next day, as we went along, our guides spontaneously delivered their substance to the different villages along our route.... It is but little we can do; but we lodge a protest in the heart against a vile system, and time may ripen it. Their great argument is: ‘What could we do without Arab cloth?’ My answer is: ‘Do what you did before the Arabs came into.the country.’ At the present rate of destruction of population, the whole country will soon be a desert.”

“The strangest disease I have seen in this country seems really to be broken-heartedness, and it attacks free men who have been captured and made slaves. Speaking with many who died from it, they ascribed their only pain to the heart, and placed the hand correctly on the spot, though many think that the organ stands high up under the breast-bone Some slavers expressed surprise to me that they should die, seeing they had plenty to eat and no work.... It seems to be really broken hearts of which they die.”

Dr. Livingstone’s servants afterwards said in answer to questions, that the sufferings of these captives were terrible. Many died because it was impossible for them to carry a burden on the head while marching in the heavy yoke, which weighs usually from thirty to forty pounds. Children for a time would keep up with wonderful endurance; but sometimes the sound of dancing and the merry tinkle of the small drums would fall on their ears in passing near to a village; then the memory of home and happy days proved too much for them; they cried and sobbed, the “broken heart” came on, and they rapidly sank. The adults, as a rule, never had been slaves before, and were so now only through treachery. The Arabs would often promise a present to villagers if they would act as guides to some distant point. As soon as they were far enough from their friends, they were seized and pinned into the slave-sticks, or yokes, from which there was no escape. These poor fellows would die, as stated above, talking to the last of their wives and children, who would never know what became of them.

Much more might be quoted in regard to this fearful traffic in humanity, but one more extract will suffice: “ When endeavoring to give some account of the slave-trade of East Africa, it was necessary to keep far within the truth, in order not to be thought guilty of exaggeration, but, in sober seriousness, the subject does not admit of exaggeration. To overdraw its evils is a simple impossibility. The sights I have seen, though common incidents of the traffic, are so nauseous that I always strive to drive them from memory, In the case of most disagreeable recollections I can succeed, in time, in consigning them to oblivion; but the slavery scenes come back unbidden, and make me start up at night, horrified by their vividness.”