Page:The slave trade of east Africa.djvu/17

13 "The slaves were yoked together in line, with forked sticks, their hands bound; women and children were simply bound.

"We set out at daylight, and pitched camp at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon.

"The slaves were compelled to sleep either in rows, head to head, under a central bar, to which the ends of their forked sticks were lashed; or they were arranged in groups of from five to ten, in such a manner that their sticks could all be brought together in the middle of the group and lashed.

"They had to sleep upon their backs, their wrists bound before them, helpless and unable to move.

"They were fed once a day with boiled jowarree and water.

"They were cheap: an adult cost two yards of common cotton cloth, a child one yard.

"They were urged forward on the march like cattle, beaten about the face and head. We witnessed many murders—many deaths; and the path was strewn with the bodies of those who had been killed.

"When we passed up with Dr. Livingstone, the road stunk with the way-side corpses; it was so again when we passed down.

"Every day we came upon the dead, and certainly we witnessed not less than a hundred deaths.

"Men were either killed by the club, or the dagger, or strangled.

"I with my own eyes (Reuten says) saw six men (at different times) choked to death: the victims were forced to sit leaning against a tree; a strip of bark or a thong was looped around the stem of the tree, pulled taut from behind, and the slave strangled.

"I saw not less than fifteen slaves clubbed to death by heavy blows between the eyes (which bespattered their faces with blood) or upon the head.

"Children were felled in this way, and put out of life by repeated blows on the head.

"I have seen a porter in mercy carry a sick slave, but some who were so thin and worn that they could not walk, and whose death was certain, were tossed aside into the bush.

"Others who had been so mercilessly beaten that but little life remained in them, were unyoked, and with a kick and an oath thrown aside to take their chances in the wilderness.

"An infant, not long born, was torn from its mother's breast, and pitched screaming into the bush. She was dragged relentlessly along.

"These things were done by the servants of the Arab owners, but always by the Arab's order. One Arab was very cruel. We saw his cruel nature in his face.

"The large and valuable tusks were not carried by the slaves,