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'The Slave Trade of East Africa.' [‎23] (32/108)

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The record is made up of 1 volume (96 pages). It was created in 1874. It was written in English. The original is part of the British Library: Printed Collections.

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just allowing enough to pass down. They are wide awake little
creatures, and I thought that my own little ones imbibed a good deal
of this quality from I don't know what. I never saw such
unwearied energy as they displayed the livelong day, and that, too,
in the hot season. The meal over, the wife, and, perhaps, daughter,
goes a little way into the forest, and collects a bundle of dry wood,
and with the baby slung on her back, in a way that suggests the
flattening of the noses of many Africans, the wood on her head, and
the boy carrying the hoe, the party wends home. Each wife has
her own granary, in which the produce of the garden is stowed.
It is of the bee-hive shape of the huts, only the walls are about
twelve feet high, and it is built on a stage about eighteen inches from
the ground. It is about five feet in diameter, and roofed with wood
and grass. The door is near the roof, and a ladder, made by
notches being cut in a tree, is used to enable the owner to climb into
it. The first thing the good wife does on coming home is to get the
ladder, climb up, and bring down millet or dura grain sufficient for
her family. She spreads it in the sun, and while this is drying or
made crisp occurs the only idle time I have seen in the day's
employment. Some rested, others dressed their husband's or neigh
bour's hair, others strung beads. I should have liked to see them
take life more easily, for it is as pleasant to see the negro reclining
nnder his palm as it is to look at the white lolling on his ottoman.
But the great matter is, they enjoy their labour, and the children
enjoy life as human beings ought, and have not the sap of life
squeezed out of them by their own parents, as is the case with
nailers, glass blowers, stockingers, fustian cutters, brick-makers, &c.,
in England. At other periods of the year, when harvest is home,
they enjoy more leisure, and jollification w r ith their native beer
called 6 pombe.' But in no case of free people, living in their own
free land, under their own free laws, are they like what slaves
become."
It is upon such simple, pastoral people that the raid of the
slave hunter is made ; the happy, peaceful homes are destroyed ;
all who resist, and many more, are ruthlessly slaughtered ;
the captives are led away to a lingering death, and the culti
vated enclosures are soon overrun by the wild undergrowth of
rank grass or shrulb.
Let us now accompany the slaving expedition of
some successful hunter, probably an Arab sheikh, whose
sacred writings inform him that all the African tribes south
of the Somalis are proper subjects for his sword and his
bow. Before starting on his expedition, he obtains from some

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Content

The Slave Trade of East Africa.

Author: Edward Hutchinson, F.R.G.S., F.S.A. (Lay Secretary, Church Missionary Society).

Publication details: London: Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle, Crown Buildings, 188 Fleet Street, E.C.

Physical Description: 1 map; octavo.

Extent and format
1 volume (96 pages)
Arrangement

This volume contains a table of contents giving chapter headings and page references.

Physical characteristics

Dimensions: 220mm x 140mm

Written in
English in Latin script
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'The Slave Trade of East Africa.' [‎23] (32/108), British Library: Printed Collections, 8156.df.48., in Qatar Digital Library <https://www.qdl.qa/archive/81055/vdc_100023636927.0x000021> [accessed 29 March 2024]

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