United States or Croatia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


For suddenly, when the strain of the composition of his book was relaxed, civilization had grown hateful to him; a picture by Fromantin, and that painter's book, Un été dans le Sahara, quickened the desire of primitive life; he sped away, and for nearly two years lived on the last verge of civilization, sometimes passing beyond it with the Bedouins into the interior, on slave-trading or rapacious expeditions.

Returning westward, we have the Bay of Honduras with a military establishment, including reserve as per Cobden, expending about £.50,000, which ranges for the far greater part within the category of the cost attending foreign trade. Then, on the West African slave-trading coast, we have Sierra Leone, with a military expenditure, actual and contingent, of about £.25,000.

On their march they met two large slave-trading parties on their way to Zumbo. Among them were a number of women with ropes round their necks, and all made fast to one long rope. They were to be sold for ivory. Tete was reached on the 23rd of November, the expedition having been absent rather more than six months.

The preachers of a slave-trading gospel frequently told us, in their sermons, that we should be "good boys," and not break into master's hen-roost, nor steal his bacon; but they never told this to these poor white people, although they knew very well that they encouraged the slaves to steal, trafficked in stolen goods, and stole themselves. Why this difference?

He had been to sea from a boy, had seen all kinds of service, and been in all sorts of vessels, merchantmen, men-of-war, privateers, and slavers; and from what I could gather from his accounts of himself, and from what he once told me, in confidence, after we had become better acquainted, he had been in even worse business than slave-trading.

Slavery and slave-trading were at that time the principal source of wealth to the island; his own church and congregation were personally interested in the traffic; all were implicated in its guilt. He stood alone, as it were, in its condemnation; with here and there an exception, all Christendom maintained the rightfulness of slavery.

He had been to sea from a boy, and had seen all kinds of service, and been in every kind of vessel: merchantmen, men-of-war, privateers, and slavers; and from what I could gather from his accounts of himself, and from what he once told me, in confidence, after we had become better acquainted, he had even been in worse business than slave-trading.