THE SLAVE TRADE OF EAST AFRICA.
Dr. Livingstone’s Letter upon the Subject to Mr. Bennett -- Compares
the Slave Trade with Piracy on the High Seas -- Natives of Interior
Africa Average Specimens of Humanity -- Slave Trade Cruelties --
Deaths from Broken Hearts -- The Need of Christian Civilization --
British Culpability.
While waiting for supplies in Unyanyembe, Dr. Livingstone wrote a second
letter to Mr. James Gordon Bennett, which was principally devoted to the
slave trade of East Africa, to greatly aid in the abolition of which
would be more gratifying to the explorer’s ambition than to discover all
the sources of the Nile. This might well be supposed from what has
already been quoted from Dr. Livingstone’s despatches to his government;
but inasmuch as he here directly appeals to the American people, this
volume would be incomplete without the remarkable and most thrillingly
interesting statements of the letter in question. They were sent by
cable telegram from London and appeared in the “Herald” newspaper of
July 27, 1872:
“At present let me give a glimpse of the slave trade, to which the
search and discovery of most of the Nile fountains have brought me face
to face. The whole traffic, whether by land or ocean, is a gross outrage
on the common law of mankind. It is carried on from age to age, and, in
addition to the evils it inflicts, presents almost insurmountable
obstacles to intercourse between different portions of the human
family. This open sore in the world is partly owing to human cupidity,
partly to the ignorance of the more civilized of mankind of the blight
which lights chiefly on more degraded piracy on the high seas. (_sic._)
It was once as common as slave trading is now, but as it became
thoroughly known the whole civilized world rose against it.
“In now trying to make Eastern African slave trade better known to
Americans, I indulge the hope I am aiding on, though in a small degree,
the good time coming yet when slavery as well as piracy will be chased
from the world. Many have but a faint idea of the evils that trading in
slaves inflicts on the victims and authors of its atrocities. Most
people imagine that negroes, after being brutalized by a long course of
servitude, with but few of the ameliorating influences that elevate the
more favored races, are fair average specimens of the African man. Our
ideas are derived from slaves of the west coast, who have for ages been
subject to domestic bondage and all the depressing agencies of a most
unhealthy climate. These have told most injuriously on their physical
frames, while fraud and the rum trade have ruined their moral natures so
as not to discriminate the difference of the monstrous injustice.
“The main body of the population is living free in the interior, under
their own chiefs and laws, cultivating their own farms, catching fish in
their own rivers, or fighting bravely with the grand old denizens of the
forest, which, in more recent continents, can only be reached in rocky
strata or under perennial ice. Winwood Reade hit the truth when he said
the ancient Egyptian, with his large, round, black eyes, full, luscious
lips, and somewhat depressed nose, is far nearer the typical negro than
the west coast African, who has been debased by the unhealthy land he
lives in. The slaves generally, and especially those on the west coast,
at Zanzibar and elsewhere are extremely ugly. I have no prejudice
against their color; indeed, any one who lives long among them forgets
they are black and feels they are just fellow-men; but the low,
retreating forehead, prognathous jaws, lark-heels and other physical
peculiarities common among slaves and West African negroes, always
awaken some feelings of aversion akin to those with which we view
specimens of the Bill Sykes and ‘Bruiser’ class in England. I would not
utter a syllable calculated to press down either class more deeply in
the mire in which it is already sunk, but I wish to point out that these
are not typical Africans any more than typical Englishmen, and that the
natives on nearly all the high lands of the interior Continent are, as a
rule, fair average specimens of humanity.
“I happened to be present when all the head men of the great Chief
Msama--who lives west of the south end of Tanganyika--had come together
to make peace with certain Arabs who had burned their chief town, and I
am certain one could not see more finely formed, intellectual heads in
any assembly in London or Paris, and the faces and forms corresponded
finely with the well-shaped heads. Msama himself had been a sort of
Napoleon for fighting and conquering in his younger days. He was
exactly like the Ancient Assyrians sculptured on the Nineveh marbles, as
Nimrod and others, and he showed himself to be one of ourselves by
habitually indulging in copious potations of beer, called pombe, and had
become what Nathaniel Hawthorne called ‘bulbous below the ribs.’ I do
not know where the phrase ‘bloated aristocracy’ arose. It must be
American, for I have had glimpses of a good many English noblemen, and
Msama was the only specimen of a ‘bloated aristocrat’ on whom I ever set
eyes.
“Many of the women are very pretty, and, like all ladies, would have
been much prettier if they had only let themselves alone. Fortunately
the dears could not change charming black eyes, beautiful foreheads,
nicely rounded limbs, well shaped forms and small hands and feet, but
must adorn themselves, and this they do by filing splendid teeth to
points like cats’ teeth. It was distressing, for it made their smile
like that of crocodile ornaments, scarce. They are not black, but of
light, warm brown color, and so very sisterish, if I may use the word,
it feels an injury done one’s self to see a bit of grass stuck through
the cartilage of the nose so as to bulge out the _alæ nasi_, or wing of
the nose of the anatomists.
“Cazembe’s Queen, Moaria Nyombe by name, would be esteemed a real beauty
either in London Paris, or New York, and yet she had a small hole
through the cartilage, near the tip of her fine, slightly aquiline nose.
But she had only filed one side of two of the front of her superb
snow-white teeth, and then, what a laugh she had! Let those who wish to
know go see her. She was carried to her farm in a pony phæton, which is
a sort of throne, fastened on two very long poles and carried by twelve
stalwart citizens. If they take the Punch motto of Cazembe--‘Niggers
don’t require to be shot here’--as their own, they may show themselves
to be men; but whether they do or not Cazembe will show himself a man of
sterling good sense.
“Now, these people, so like ourselves externally, have brave, genuine
human souls. Rua, large sections of country northwest of Cazembe, but
still in same inland region, is peopled with men very like those of
Wsama and Cazembe. An Arab, Syed Ben Habib, was sent to trade in Rua two
years ago, and, as Arabs usually do where natives have no guns, Syed Ben
Habib’s elder brother carried matters with a high hand. The Rua men
observed the elder brother slept in a white tent, and, pitching spears
into it by night, killed him. As Moslems never forgive blood, the
younger brother forthwith ‘ran a muck’ on all indiscriminately in a
large district.
“Let it not be supposed any of these people are, like American Indians,
insatiable, blood-thirsty savages, who will not be reclaimed or
entertain terms of lasting friendship with fair-dealing strangers. Had
the actual murderers been demanded, and a little time granted, I feel
morally certain, from many other instances among tribes who, like the Ba
Rua, have not been spoiled by Arab traders, they would all have been
given up.
“The chiefs of the country would, first of all, have specified the crime
of which the elder brother was guilty, and who had been led to avenge
it. It is very likely they would have stipulated no other should be
punished but the actual perpetrator, the domestic slave acting under his
orders being considered free of blame.
“I know nothing that distinguishes the uncontaminated African from other
degraded peoples more than their entire reasonableness and good sense.
It is different after they have had wives, children, and relatives
kidnapped, but that is more than human nature, civilized or savage, can
bear. In the chase in question indiscriminate slaughter, capture, and
plunder took place. A very large number of very fine young men were
captured and secured in chains and wooden yokes.
“I came near the party of Syed Ben Habib, close to a point where a huge
rent in the Mountain of Rua allows the escape of the great river Lualaba
out of Lake Moora, and here I had for the first time an opportunity of
observing the difference between slaves and freemen made captive. When
fairly across the Lualaba, Syed Ben Habib thought his captives safe, and
got rid of the trouble of attending to and watching the chained gangs by
taking off both chains and yokes. All declared joy and a perfect
willingness to follow Syed to the end of the world or elsewhere, but
next morning twenty-two made clear of two mountains.
“Many more, seeing the broad Lualaba roll between them and the homes of
their infancy, lost all heart, and in three days eight of them died.
They had no complaint but pain in the heart, and they pointed out its
seat correctly, though many believe the heart situated underneath the
top of the sternum, or breast bone. This to me was the most startling
death I ever saw. They evidently die of broken-heartedness, and the
Arabs wondered, seeing they had plenty to eat.
“I saw others perish, particularly a very fine boy ten or twelve years
of age. When asked where he felt ill, he put his hand correctly and
exactly over the heart. He was kindly carried, and, as he breathed out
his soul, was laid gently on the side of the path. The captors are not
unusually cruel. They were callous. Slaving hardened their hearts.
“When Syed, an old friend of mine, crossed Lualaba, he heard I was in
the village, where a company of slave traders were furiously assaulted
for three days by justly incensed Bobemba. I would not fight nor allow
my people to fire if I saw them, because Bobemba had been especially
kind to me. Syed sent a party of his own people to invite me to leave
the village and come to him. He showed himself the opposite of
hard-hearted; but slavery hardens within, petrifies the feelings, is bad
for the victims and ill for the victimizers. Once, it is said, a party
of twelve, who had been slaves in their own country--Cunda or Conda, of
which Cazemba is chief or general--were loaded with large, heavy yokes,
which were forked trees, about three inches in diameter and seven or
eight feet long, the neck inserted in the fork and an iron bar driven
across one end of the fork to the other and riveted to the other end,
tied at night to the tree or ceiling of the hut, and the neck being
firm in the fork and the slave held off from unloosing it, was
excessively troublesome to the wearer, and, when marching, two yokes
were tied together by tree ends and loads put on the slaves’ heads
beside.
“A woman, having an additional yoke and load, and a child on her back,
said to me on passing, ‘They are killing me. If they would take off the
yoke I could manage the load and child; but I shall die with three
loads.’ The one who spoke this did die; poor little girl! Her child
perished of starvation.
“I interceded some, but when unyoked off they bounded into the long
grass, and I was greatly blamed for not caring in presence of the owners
of the property.
“After the day’s march under a broiling, vertical sun, with yokes and
heavy loads, the strongest were exhausted. The party of twelve, above
mentioned, were sitting down singing and laughing. ‘Hallo, said I,
‘these fellows take to it kindly. This must be the class for whom
philosophers say slavery is the natural state;’ and I went and asked the
cause of their mirth.
“I had asked aid of their owner as to the meaning of the word ‘Rukha,’
which usually means fly or leap. They were using it to express the idea
of haunting, as a ghost, inflicting disease or death, and the song was:
‘Yes, we going away to Manga, abroad, or white man’s land, with yoke on
our necks; but we shall have no yokes in death, and shall return and
haunt and kill you.’ Chorus then struck in, which was the name of the
man who had sold each of them, and then followed the general laugh, in
which at first I saw no bitterness. Tarembee, an old man, at least one
hundred and four years, being one of the sellers, in accordance with
African belief, they had no doubt of being soon able, by ghost power, to
kill even him.
“The refrain was as if:--‘Oh! oh! oh! bird of freedom, you sold me.’
‘Oh! oh! oh! I shall haunt you! Oh! oh! oh!’ Laughter told not of mirth,
but of tears, such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter. He that
is higher than the highest regardeth.
“If I am permitted,” says Dr. Livingstone in concluding the subject of
the slave trade, “in any way to promote its suppression, I shall not
grudge the toil and time I have spent. It would be better to lessen this
great human woe than to discover the sources of the Nile.”
The moral degradation of these people is only to be reached and cured,
in the deliberate judgment of the explorer-missionary, through the means
of Christian civilization. “The religion of Christ,” he says with
emphasis, “is unquestionably the best for man. I refer to it not as the
Protestant, the Catholic, the Greek, or any other, but to the
comprehensive faith which has spread more widely over the world than
most people imagine, and whose votaries, of whatever name, are better
than any outside the pale.” The great end of placing the numerous tribes
of East and Central Africa under the pure and elevating morality of the
Christian religion cannot be successful until the suppression of the
inhuman slave trade, which has its headquarters at Zanzibar, shall have
been accomplished. It would be unjust to forget that Great Britain has
done much, very much, for the suppression of this terrible traffic in
other portions of the globe. It would be unjust to charge the government
of Great Britain with intentional criminality in this case. But it
stands proved, by the failure of English expeditions to find Dr.
Livingstone, and by his own positive, earnest testimony, that it is the
subjects of the British monarchy who are responsible for the existence
of the slave trade of Zanzibar and all the nameless horrors of the
interior resulting therefrom. The moral culpability, by reason of
neglect--not to put the case too strongly--of the British government is
therefore made manifest; and of this great national turpitude that
government must stand convicted before the bar of Christendom.