DR. LIVINGSTONE ON THE SLAVE TRADE.

Southland Times, Volume VI, Issue 491, 11 June 1866, Page 3

DR. LIVINGSTONE ON THE SLAVE TRADE.

Next forenoon we halted at the village of our friend Mbame to obtain new carriers, because Chibisa's men, never before having been hired, and not having yet learnt to trust us, did not choose to go further. After resting a little. Mb&me told us that a slave party on its j way to Zette would presently pass I through his village. " Shall we interfere? " we inquired of each other. We remembered that all our valuable private baggage was in Zette, which, if we freed the slaves, might, together with some Government property, he destroyed in retaliation; but tbis system of alavehunters dogging us where previously they durst not venture, and on pretence of being "our children" setting one tribe against another, to furnish themselves with slaves, would so inevitably thwart all the efforts for which we had the sanction of the Portuguese Grovernment, that we resolved to run all risks, and put a stop, if possible, to the slave trade, which had now followed on the footsteps of our discoveries. A few minute 3 after Mbame had. spoken to us, the slave party, a long line of manacled men, women, and children, came wending their way round the hill and into the valley, on the side of which the village stood. The black drivers, armed with muskets and bedecked with various articles of finery, inarched jauntily in the front, middle, and rear of the line, some of them blowing exultant notes out of long tin horns. They seemed to feel that they were doing a very noble thing, and might proudly march with an air of triumph ; but the instant the fellows caught a glimpse of the English, they darted off like mad into the forest — bo .fast, indeed, that we caught but a glimpse of their red caps and the soles of their feet. The chief of the party alone remained, and he, from being in front, had his hand tightly grasped by a Makololo. He proved to be a well-known slave of the late Commandant at Zette, and for some time our own attendant while there. On asking him how he obtained these captives, he replied, he had bought them; tfut on our inquiring of the people all save four said they had been captured in war. While this inquiry was going on, he bolted too. The captives knelt down, and in their way of expressing thanks, clapped their hands with great energy. The were thus left entirely on our hands, and knives were Boon bustly at work cutting the women and children loose, it was more difficult to cut the men sdrift, as each had his neck in the fork of ft etout stick, six or seven feet long, and kept in by a n iron rod which was riveted at both ends across the throat. With a saw, luckily in the Bishop's baggage, one by one the men were sawn out in freedom. The women, on being told to take the meal they were carrying and cook breakfasts for themselves and the children, seemed to consider the news too good to be true, but after a little coaxing went at it with alacrity, and made a capital fire, by which to boil their potß, with the slave sticks and bonds, their old acquaintances through many a sad and weary day. Many were mere children, abont five years of age and under. One little boy, with the simplicity of childhood, said to our men, " The others tied and starved us, you cut the ropes and tell us to eat ; what sort of people are you? Where did you come from ?" Two of the women had been shot the day before for attempting to untie the ihongs. This, the rest were told, was to prevent them from attempting to escape. One woman had her infant's brains knocked out, because she could not carry her load and it ; and a man was despatched with an axe, because lie had broken down with fatigue. Self-interest would have set a watch over the whole rather than commit murder ; but in this traffic we invariably find self-interest overcome by contempt of human life and by blood-thirstiness. — Livingstone's Expedition to Zambesi.