'The Slave Trade of East Africa.' [‎20] (29/108)

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It will be seen from the preceding pages that it is an alien
race of Arab invaders who have carried on and profited by
this traffic, and we shall see that in almost all cases the raids
are actual invasions by Arabs into peaceful lands.
CHAPTER II.
The People and their Land.
Let us now turn our attention to the people who are made
the victims of this trade. The district from which the
principal supplies for this trade have been drawn lies between
the fifth and fifteenth parallels of south latitude. Dr. Livingstone
describes it on the south about the Shire and Zambesi rivers
and on the north in the Manyuema country, to the west and south
of Lake Tanganika.
Professor Berlioux, in u La Traite Orientale," gives the
following description of the country whence the slave gangs
are now drawn, and it should be remembered that not many
years ago the hunter found his prey among the coast tribes
who now have been almost entirely destroyed : '
Let us now more particularly direct our attention to the table
land, whose waters run into the Zambesi, and there study this
devastation. The Nyassa, which is in the middle of this table-land
is a beautiful lake, whose waters so abound with fish that the
satiated crocodiles almost cease to be dangerous. All round the lake
rise mountains covered with forests, cultivated fields, and villages
intersected with a multitude of smiling valleys, with meadows where
vast flocks feed, and where numerous brooks flow into the Nvassi
spreading freshness and fertility. In certain places the population is
compact, and the villages form an almost continuous chain; the soil
is fertile, and the produce varied.
"When Livingstone visited these countries for the first time in
1851, he saw the population men, women, and children, scattered
oyer the plain engaged in agriculture; and as he passed through the
weaving cotton?' ^ 0f COra ' OT
The Allowing most interesting picture of the simple pastoral
life of the tribes whom the slave hunter makes his prey is