her be broken up by the instigation of rebellion
among its dependencies or made a tool of at their expense. The
inter-relation of tribes is so intricate that it is impossible to
exaggerate the effect of disturbing the equilibrium at even a single
centre. But, like a river, a slave caravan has to be fed by innumerable
tributaries all along its course, at first in order to gather a
sufficient volume of human bodies for the start, and afterward to
replace the frightful loss by desertion, disablement, and death."

Next to Livingstone, whose last pathetic appeal to the civilized world
to "heal the open sore of Africa" stands engraved in marble in
Westminster Abbey, no better witness can be summoned in regard to the
slave trade and the influence of Islam generally in Eastern and Central
Africa than Henry M. Stanley. From the time when he encountered the
Mohammedan propagandists at the Court of Uganda he has seen how
intimately and vitally the faith and the traffic are everywhere united.
I give but a single passage from his "Congo Free State," page 144.

"We discovered that this horde of banditti--for in reality and without
disguise they were nothing else--was under the leadership of several
chiefs, but principally under Karema and Kibunga. They had started
sixteen months previously from Wane-Kirundu, about thirty miles below
Vinya Njara. For eleven months the band had been raiding successfully
between the Congo and the Lubiranzi, on the left bank. They had then
undertaken to perform the same cruel work between the Biyerre and
Wane-Kirundu. On looking at my map I find that such a territory within
the area described would cover superficially 16,200 square geographical
miles on the left bank, and 10,500 miles on the right, all of which in
statute mileage would be equal to 34,700 square miles, just 2,000 square
miles greater than the island of Ireland, inhabited by about 1,000,000
people.

"The band when it set out from Kirundu numbered 300 fighting men, armed
with flint-locks, double-barrelled percussion guns, and a few
breech-loaders; their followers, or domestic slaves and women, doubled
this force.... Within the enclosure was a series of low sheds extending
many lines deep from the immediate edge of the clay bank inland, 100
yards; in length the camp was about 300 yards. At the landing-place
below were 54 long canoes, varying in carrying capacity. Each might
convey from 10 to 100 people.... The first general impressions are