Describes “Black Ivory” at Sea.

Having started for the coast with a large gang of slaves a short time before Marizano, as we have already said, and having left the Englishmen to the care of the half-caste, chiefly because he did not desire their company, although he had no objection to the ransom², Yoosoof proceeded over the same track which we have already described in part, leaving a bloody³ trail behind him.

It is a fearful track, of about 500 miles in length, that which lies between the head of Lake Nyassa and the sea-coast at Kilwa. We have no intention of dragging the reader over it to witness the cruelties and murders that were perpetrated by the slavers, or the agonies endured by the slaves. Livingstone speaks of it as a land of death, of desolation, and dead men’s bones. And no wonder, for it is one of the main arteries⁴ through which the blood of Africa flows, like the water of natural rivers, to the sea. The slave-gangs are perpetually passing eastward⁵ through it—perpetually dropping four-fifths of their numbers on it as they go. Dr Livingstone estimates that, in some cases, not more than one-tenth of the slaves captured reach the sea-coast alive. It is therefore rather under than over-stating the case to say that out of every hundred starting from the interior, eighty perish on the road.

Yoosoof left with several thousands of strong and healthy men, women, and children—most of them being children—he arrived at Kilwa with only eight hundred. The rest had sunk by the way, either from exhaustion⁶ or cruel treatment, or both. The loss was great; but as regards the trader it could not be called severe, because the whole gang of slaves cost him little—some of them even nothing!—and the remaining eight hundred would fetch a good price. They were miserably⁷ thin, indeed, and exhibited on their poor, worn, and travel-stained bodies the evidence of many a cruel castigation⁸; but Yoosoof knew that a little rest and good feeding at Kilwa would restore them to some degree of marketable value, and at Zanzibar he was pretty sure of obtaining, in round numbers, about 10 pounds a head for them, while in the Arabian and Persian ports he could obtain much more, if he chose to pass beyond the treaty-protected water at Lamoo, and run the risk of being captured by British cruisers. It is “piracy” to carry slaves north of Lamoo. South of that point for hundreds of miles, robbery, rapine, murder, cruelty, such as devils could not excel if they were to try, is a “domestic institution” with which Britons are pledged not to

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