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.
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