minerals of different kinds, and are
worn about the neck and wrists. They are all expert hunters and
fishers. They devour their fish raw, and the small ones without even
divesting them of their entrails; what they cannot eat they pickle
with salt procured at the head of the bay."
GEORGE. "What nasty disgusting people, to eat raw fish!"
MR. WILTON. "In appeasing the cravings of hunger they are, in fact,
horribly disgusting, being actually more fond of the entrails of
cattle and sheep than of any other part; and when an animal is
killed, these people positively devour its entrails raw, even before
they are cold, while they will refuse to partake of the carcass,
cooked or otherwise."
DORA. "Now we pass on to Great and Little Fish Bays, which are on
the coast of that wretched slave country, Benguela."
GRANDY. "Ah! poor Africa is cursed with evils, unknown to the rest
of the human race in any section of the globe--reptiles of the most
deadly venom, beasts of unparalleled ferocity, deserts of sand, and
moral deserts a thousand times more appalling. But her greatest
curse of all is the white man's cupidity, tearing asunder the
tenderest ties of human nature, and plunging villages and families
into mourning and despair. The hyena, the tiger, the crocodile, are
creatures existing by the will of God; the man-stealer is a
sin-created monster! The depredations of the former are the effects
of hunger; those of the latter avarice--the meanest passion that can
enter the human breast."
MR. WILTON. "It is now sixty years since Great Britain commenced
offensive warfare against the African slave-trade; but grieved am I
to say that little good has resulted from it; for the slave-trade is
still carried on as extensively as ever. Our ships, which are
continually on the look-out to recapture the slave-vessels, scarcely
ever take more than fifteen in the course of twelve months; and the
cost of maintaining this force to our country is 600,000_l_.
annually. This money, in my humble opinion, might be more
advantageously laid out--mean in reference to this degraded and
demoralized quarter of the world, Africa. It might be expended in
planting industry, knowledge, and security; in fact, in civilizing
the wretched people; and surely that would more effectually check
the slave-trade than the occasional capture of one or two cargoes.
For the African slave-trade is not the _cause_, but the _effect_, of
African ignorance, as any wretched c
|