Page:Distinguished Churchmen.djvu/196

 1 62 DISTINGUISHED CHURCHMEN

to acquire these much-desired articles, Mtesa would set his men to work raiding for slaves, who, when brought in, would be exchanged to the Arabs for guns, powder, gun-caps and calico. A woman, I believe, could usually be purchased for a gun, a child for a 100 gun-caps, and a man, on whom a higher value was set, for sometimes two guns. Of course, the ruin wrought was not simply con fined to the slaves carried to the coast. There were also thousands who died on the road, and who were destroyed in the actual capture of these slaves. Kaberegga, the King of Bunyoro, was also very busily engaged in this traffic. The slaves were drawn largely from the Busoga, Bunyoro, Nkole and Madhi tribes.&quot;

&quot;How did the work of resisting the slave-trade commence ? &quot;

&quot;Well, the influence of our mission gradually led to an improvement in this terrible state of things, until at last the Mohammedan element the Arab element having risen in rebellion against the King of Uganda, was driven out and destroyed, and the Christian power became paramount. In those days the British Govern ment had not made its appearance at all, nor any European Power. Mackay wrote probably about 1879. Things slowly became better until, in 1893, the whole question was decided by the great chiefs of Uganda on Christian lines, and on the last day of March 1893 a document was

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