We Needed
Help In Carrying Our Goods, While Our Men Were Ill, Though Still Able
To March.
When we had settled with others for hire, we were often
told, that the dealers in men had taken possession of some, and had
taken them away altogether.
Other things led us to believe that the
slave-traders carry matters with a high hand; and no wonder, for the
possession of gunpowder gives them almost absolute power. The mode
by which tribes armed with bows and arrows carry on warfare, or
defend themselves, is by ambuscade. They never come out in open
fight, but wait for the enemy ensconced behind trees, or in the long
grass of the country, and shoot at him unawares. Consequently, if
men come against them with firearms, when, as is usually the case,
the long grass is all burned off, the tribe attacked are as helpless
as a wooden ship, possessing only signal guns, would be before an
iron-clad steamer. The time of year selected for this kind of
warfare is nearly always that in which the grass is actually burnt
off, or is so dry as readily to take fire. The dry grass in Africa
looks more like ripe English wheat late in the autumn, than anything
else we can compare it to. Let us imagine an English village
standing in a field of this sort, bounded only by the horizon, and
enemies setting fire to a line of a mile or two, by running along
with bunches of burning straw in their hands, touching here and there
the inflammable material, - the wind blowing towards the doomed
village - the inhabitants with only one or two old muskets, but ten to
one no powder, - the long line of flames, leaping thirty feet into the
air with dense masses of black smoke - and pieces of charred grass
falling down in showers.
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