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Updated: June 20, 2025
On that voyage Captain Vesey was strongly attracted by the "beauty, intelligence, and alertness" of one of the slaves on board. So were the ship's officers. This particular object of interest, on the part of the slave-traders, was a black boy of fourteen summers.
The work was pushed with indomitable energy. In 1894 a vigorous campaign against the Arab slave-traders was brought to a successful conclusion. In 1898 the first railway connecting Matadi, on the Lower Congo, with Leopoldville, on the Stanley Pool, opened the great waterway as far as the Stanley Falls.
An English trader may there hear a demand for payment of guides, but never, so far as I am aware, is he asked to pay for leave to traverse a country. The idea does not seem to have entered the native mind, except through slave-traders, for the aborigines all acknowledge that the untilled land, not needed for pasturage, belongs to God alone, and that no harm is done by people passing through it.
Now they are freely offered for $10 to $20, but there are no buyers; the highest bid of which I heard was $100 for a house-"help." The slave-traders in the Congo look upon their employment as did the contrabandist in the golden days of smuggling; the "free sailor" whom Marryatt depicts, a law-breaker, yet not less a very pleasant, companionable fellow.
They regaled him with wheaten loaves, chickens and rice, and presented him with five fat oxen, eight sheep, and ten goats. Round about they had cultivated ground and large herds, and it was difficult to believe that the stately well-grown men were base slave-traders.
Half-caste Portuguese slave-traders had made their way to Linyanti, and one, who pretended to be an important person, was carried about in a hammock slung between two poles, which looking like a bag, the natives called him "the father of the bag." Mpepe favoured these scoundrels, as he hoped by their means to succeed in his rebellion.
When we had settled with others for hire, we were often told, that the dealers in men had taken possession of some, and had taken them away altogether. Other things led us to believe that the slave-traders carry matters with a high hand; and no wonder, for the possession of gunpowder gives them almost absolute power.
He was carried in a hammock, slung between two poles, which appearing to be a bag, the Makololo named him "Father of the Bag". Mpepe favored these slave-traders, and they, as is usual with them, founded all their hopes of influence on his successful rebellion. My arrival on the scene was felt to be so much weight in the scale against their interests.
For many years the Arab slave-traders had been extending their raids in easterly and south-easterly directions, until they began to desolate the parts of the Congo State nearest to the great lakes and the Bahr-el-Ghazal. Their activity may be ascribed to the following causes. The slave-trade has for generations been pursued in Africa.
The blood-stained wretches who remained in the camps and towns of the slave-traders, along the eastern coast of Africa, or in the Isle of Madagascar, alone could tell how many were lost, since of those who went out from them to make war upon the Mazitu and their white friends, none returned again with the long lines of expected captives.
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