We Were Not Aware Of This Step,
To Which The Generosity Of His Nature Prompted Him, Till Two Days
After He Had Started.
In addition to securing supplies for the
Universities' Mission, he brought some for the Expedition, and took
bearings, by which he hoped to connect his former work at Tette with
the mountains in the Shire district.
The toil of this journey was
too much for his strength, as with the addition of great scarcity of
water, it had been for that of Dr. Kirk and Rae, and he returned in a
sadly haggard and exhausted condition; diarrhoea supervened, and that
ended in dysentery and fever, which terminated fatally on the 21st of
April, 1863. He received the unremitting attentions of Dr. Kirk, and
Dr. Meller, surgeon of the "Pioneer," during the fortnight of his
illness; and as he had suffered very little from fever, or any other
disease, in Africa, we had entertained strong hopes that his youth
and unimpaired constitution would have carried him through. During
the night of the 20th his mind wandered so much, that we could not
ascertain his last wishes; and on the morning of the 21st, to our
great sorrow, he died. He was buried on the 22nd, near a large tree
on the right bank of the Shire, about five hundred yards from the
lowest of the Murchison Cataracts - and close to a rivulet, at which
the "Lady Nyassa" and "Pioneer" lay.
No words can convey an adequate idea of the scene of widespread
desolation which the once pleasant Shire Valley now presented.
Instead of smiling villages and crowds of people coming with things
for sale, scarcely a soul was to be seen; and, when by chance one
lighted on a native, his frame bore the impress of hunger, and his
countenance the look of a cringing broken-spiritedness. A drought
had visited the land after the slave-hunting panic swept over it.
Had it been possible to conceive the thorough depopulation which had
ensued, we should have avoided coming up the river. Large masses of
the people had fled down to the Shire, only anxious to get the river
between them and their enemies. Most of the food had been left
behind; and famine and starvation had cut off so many, that the
remainder were too few to bury the dead. The corpses we saw floating
down the river were only a remnant of those that had perished, whom
their friends, from weakness, could not bury, nor over-gorged
crocodiles devour. It is true that famine caused a great portion of
this waste of human life: but the slave-trade must be deemed the
chief agent in the ruin, because, as we were informed, in former
droughts all the people flocked from the hills down to the marshes,
which are capable of yielding crops of maize in less than three
months, at any time of the year, and now they were afraid to do so.
A few, encouraged by the Mission in the attempt to cultivate, had
their little patches robbed as successive swarms of fugitives came
from the hills. Who can blame these outcasts from house and home for
stealing to save their wretched lives, or wonder that the owners
protected the little all, on which their own lives depended, with
club and spear? We were informed by Mr. Waller of the dreadful
blight which had befallen the once smiling Shire Valley. His words,
though strong, failed to impress us with the reality. In fact, they
were received, as some may accept our own, as tinged with
exaggeration; but when our eyes beheld the last mere driblets of this
cup of woe, we for the first time felt that the enormous wrongs
inflicted on our fellow-men by slaving are beyond exaggeration.
Wherever we took a walk, human skeletons were seen in every
direction, and it was painfully interesting to observe the different
postures in which the poor wretches had breathed their last. A whole
heap had been thrown down a slope behind a village, where the
fugitives often crossed the river from the east; and in one hut of
the same village no fewer than twenty drums had been collected,
probably the ferryman's fees. Many had ended their misery under
shady trees - others under projecting crags in the hills - while others
lay in their huts, with closed doors, which when opened disclosed the
mouldering corpse with the poor rags round the loins - the skull
fallen off the pillow - the little skeleton of the child, that had
perished first, rolled up in a mat between two large skeletons. The
sight of this desert, but eighteen months ago a well peopled valley,
now literally strewn with human bones, forced the conviction upon us,
that the destruction of human life in the middle passage, however
great, constitutes but a small portion of the waste, and made us feel
that unless the slave-trade - that monster iniquity, which has so long
brooded over Africa - is put down, lawful commerce cannot be
established.
We believed that, if it were possible to get a steamer upon the Lake,
we could by her means put a check on the slavers from the East Coast;
and aid more effectually still in the suppression of the slave-trade,
by introducing, by way of the Rovuma, a lawful traffic in ivory. We
therefore unscrewed the "Lady Nyassa" at a rivulet about five hundred
yards below the first cataract, and began to make a road over the
thirty-five or forty miles of land portage, by which to carry her up
piecemeal. After mature consideration, we could not imagine a more
noble work of benevolence, than thus to introduce light and liberty
into a quarter of this fair earth, which human lust has converted
into the nearest possible resemblance of what we conceive the
infernal regions to be - and we sacrificed much of our private
resources as an offering for the promotion of so good a cause.
The chief part of the labour of road-making consisted in cutting down
trees and removing stones.
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