STANLEY ON AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE.

Kumara Times, Issue 2605, 12 January 1885, Page 3

STANLEY ON AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE.

Mr Stanley made some revelations as to the slave trade in Africa at the Jubilee Meeting held in the Manchester Free Trade Hall recently, which ought to be widely known and considered. The Portuguese proceed on the principle that the best thing possible for the negro is to catch him, sell him to severe task-masters, and.force him to work; the Mohammedans b£ Africa also adopt the same idea. The consequence is that slavery of the most abhorrent type is common. The fallowing statement made by Mr Stanley speaks for itself: —“ A slave trade was a great blight which clung to Africa like an aggravated pest, destroying * men faster than children could be born. He overtook a party Arab marauders on the Congo in November of last year, over 1200 miles from the sea. They had utterly desolated a number of villages, massacred the adult males who had not at once fled, and carried off the women and children, lie never saw such a sight before. In a small camp 300 fighting men kept in manacles and fetters, 2300 naked women and chilren, their poor bodies encrusted with dirt, all emaciated and weary through such misery. It was like ravening human kennels—a sight to make angels weep, cruel enough to make strong men curse and cry ‘ vengeance on the murderers.’ Here was the net , result of - the burning of 118 villages

and the devastation of 43 districts to glut the avaricious soul of a man who had constituted himself chief of a district some 200 miles higher up. Though over 75 years old, here he was prosecuting his murderous business, having shed so much human blood in three months that, if collected into a tank, it might have sufficed to drown him and all his thirty wives and concubines. Those 2300 slaves would have to be transported over 200 miles in canoes, and such as could not be fed would die, and perhaps 800—perhaps 900—of all the number would ever reach their destination. This was the latest story of the slave trade in Africa.” Mr Stanley says that after seeing some millions of natives and talking with thousands of them, he is convinced of their readiness to engage in honest toil if it be put before them. For fair money he invariably found that he could get fair work. It was true that for some years no native went to the station and offered to work, bat now 1000 natives voluntarily marched many miles seeking for work from the International Association every month. So long as the Portuguese rule fills the laud with terror and dread, cruelty and injustice, the development of the finer features of the negro character must be repressed.