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Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 222, 18 March 1912, Page 4

IN DARKEST AFRICA. ' A remarkable story of adventure in Africa was told by Mr. Daniel Crawford, a missionary connected with the Plymouth in the course of an interview in London recently. Mr. Crawford went to Africa twenty-three years ago and gradually made'-his way from the west coast to the Katanga country, north of Rhodesia. He had two .companions in the early stages of his journey, but they left him after a few months, and he then solved 'the difficulty of getting into the interior, past a succession of turbulent tribes, by attaching himself to a slaver's caravan. He secured a close acquaintance with the slave trade as it was conducted by many huffianly Potuguese. "All along the path," he states, "we saw the shackles and the yokes of slaves who had died on the way down to the coast. To prevent the slaves escaping at night the legs of each four of them are tightly bunched together in wooden shackles. •Dozens of shackles were found along the same route in 1909; not old shackles, but green shackles, shackles still wet with the sap of the tree. Though Britain prevents slaves being shipped to Jamaica or elsewhere, in Africa there is always any amount of slavery up the back path. Africa lives on slave labor." Mr. Crawford made, his way to a place where slaves were always plentiful and cheap, the capital of the Emperor Mushidi. This chief was a veritable Napoleon of Central Africa. He had conquered tribe after tribe and lived in a large town that was the scene of dreadful cruelties. He kept the white man a close prisoner for many years. "The life was awful," Mr. Crawford said. "There were hills of skulls all over the place and drastic executions daily in full swing. Blood, blood, and yet more blood; blood of babes, blood of women, blood of old men. And there was I, shut in, a hopeless prisoner, seeing these people killed in batches, ten, fourteen, twenty a day, frightful murders, committed with unspeakable barbarities." At last the Belgians arrived upon the scene, and after a short and sharp struggle Mushidi was overthrown and killed. Mr. Crawford was set free to continue his missionary work, and he has now a large congregation in the heart of Africa.