The Sun Struck Very Hot,
And The Men Felt It Most In Their Feet.
Every one who could get a
bit of goatskin made it into a pair of sandals.
While sitting at Nkwinda's, a man behind the court hedge-wall said,
with great apparent glee, that an Arab slaving party on the other
side of the confluence of the Shire and Lake were "giving readily two
fathoms of calico for a boy, and two and a half for a girl; never saw
trade so brisk, no haggling at all." This party was purchasing for
the supply of the ocean slave-trade. One of the evils of this
traffic is that it profits by every calamity that happens in a
country. The slave-trader naturally reaps advantage from every
disorder, and though in the present case some lives may have been
saved that otherwise would have perished, as a rule he intensifies
hatreds, and aggravates wars between the tribes, because the more
they fight and vanquish each other the richer his harvest becomes.
Where slaving and cattle are unknown the people live in peace. As we
sat leaning against that hedge, and listened to the harangue of the
slave-trader's agent, it glanced across our mind that this was a
terrible world; the best in it unable, from conscious imperfections,
to say to the worst "Stand by! for I am holier than thou." The
slave-trader, imbued no doubt with certain kindly feelings, yet
pursuing a calling which makes him a fair specimen of a human fiend,
stands grouped with those by whom the slave-traders are employed, and
with all the workers of sin and misery in more highly-favoured lands,
an awful picture to the All-seing Eye.
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