that
the camp is much too densely peopled for comfort. There are rows upon
rows of dark nakedness, relieved here and there by the white dresses of
the captors. There are lines or groups of naked forms--upright,
standing, or moving about listlessly; naked bodies are stretched under
the sheds in all positions; naked legs innumerable are seen in the
perspective of prostrate sleepers; there are countless naked
children--many mere infants--forms of boyhood and girlhood, and
occasionally a drove of absolutely naked old women bending under a
basket of fuel, or cassava tubers, or bananas, who are driven through
the moving groups by two or three musketeers. On paying more attention
to details, I observe that mostly all are fettered; youths with iron
rings around their necks, through which a chain, like one of our boat
anchor-chains, is rove, securing the captives by twenties. The children
over ten are secured by these copper rings, each ringed leg brought
together by the central ring."

By a careful examination of statistics Mr. Stanley estimates that
counting the men killed in the raids and those who perish on the march
or are slain because supposed to be worthless, every 5,000 slaves
actually sold cost over 30,000 lives.

But there are Arabs and Arabs we are told. The slave-dealers of East
Africa and the barbarous chieftains who push their bloody conquests in
Western Soudan are bad enough, it is admitted, but they are
"exceptions." Yet we insist that they illustrate the very spirit of
Mohammed himself, who authorized the taking of prisoners of war as
slaves. Their plea is that they save the souls of those they capture;
many of these traders are Mollahs--Pharisees of the Pharisees. Canon
Taylor, Dr. Blyden, and others have given us glowing accounts of "Arab
missionaries going about without purse or scrip, and disseminating their
religion by quietly teaching the Koran;" but the venerable Bishop
Crowther, who has spent his whole life in that part of Africa where
these conquests are supposed to be made, declares that the real vocation
of the quiet apostles of the Koran is that of fetish peddlers.[118] If
it be objected that this is the biased testimony of a Christian
missionary, it may be backed by the explorer Lander, who, in speaking of
this same class of men, says: "These Mollahs procure an easy subsistence
by making fetishes or writing charms on bits of wood which are washed
off carefully into a basin of water, and drank wi