“I know nothing that distinguishes the uncontaminated African from other degraded peoples more than their entire reasonableness and good sense. It is different after they have had wives, children, and relatives kidnapped, but that is more than human nature, civilized or savage, can bear. In the chase in question indiscriminate slaughter, capture, and plunder took place. A very large number of very fine young men were captured and secured in chains and wooden yokes.
“I came near the party of Syed Ben Habib, close to a point where a huge rent in the Mountain of Rua allows the escape of the great river Lualaba out of Lake Moora, and here I had for the first time an opportunity of observing the difference between slaves and freemen made captive. When fairly across the Lualaba, Syed Ben Habib thought his captives safe, and got rid of the trouble of attending to and watching the chained gangs by taking off both chains and yokes. All declared joy and a perfect willingness to follow Syed to the end of the world or elsewhere, but next morning twenty-two made clear of two mountains.
“Many more, seeing the broad Lualaba roll between them and the homes of their infancy, lost all heart, and in three days eight of them died. They had no complaint but pain in the heart, and they pointed out its seat correctly, though many believe the heart situated underneath the top of the sternum, or breast bone. This to me was the most startling death I ever saw. They evidently die of broken-heartedness, and the Arabs wondered, seeing they had plenty to eat.
“I saw others perish, particularly a very fine boy ten or twelve years of age. When asked where he felt ill, he put his hand correctly and exactly over the heart. He was kindly carried, and, as he breathed out his soul, was laid gently on the side of the path. The captors are not unusually cruel. They were callous. Slaving hardened their hearts.
“When Syed, an old friend of mine, crossed Lualaba, he heard I was in the village, where a company of slave traders were furiously assaulted for three days by justly incensed Bobemba. I would not fight nor allow my people to fire if I saw them, because Bobemba had been especially kind to me. Syed sent a party of his own people to invite me to leave the village and come to him. He showed himself the opposite of hard-hearted; but slavery hardens within, petrifies the feelings, is bad for the victims and ill for the victimizers. Once, it is said, a party of twelve, who had been slaves in their own country—Cunda or Conda, of which Cazemba is chief or general—were loaded with large, heavy yokes, which were forked trees, about three inches in diameter and seven or eight feet long, the neck inserted in the fork and an iron bar driven across one end of the fork to the other and riveted to the other end, tied at night to the tree or ceiling of the hut, and the neck being firm in the fork and the slave held off from unloosing it, was excessively troublesome to the wearer, and, when marching, two yokes were tied together by tree ends and loads put on the slaves’ heads beside.
“A woman, having an additional yoke and load, and a child on her back, said to me on passing, ‘They are killing me. If they would take off the yoke I could manage the load and child; but I shall die with three loads.’ The one who spoke this did die; poor little girl! Her child perished of starvation.
“I interceded some, but when unyoked off they bounded into the long grass, and I was greatly blamed for not caring in presence of the owners of the property.
“After the day’s march under a broiling, vertical sun, with yokes and heavy loads, the strongest were exhausted. The party of twelve, above mentioned, were sitting down singing and laughing. ‘Hallo, said I, ‘these fellows take to it kindly. This must be the class for whom philosophers say slavery is the natural state;’ and I went and asked the cause of their mirth.
“I had asked aid of their owner as to the meaning of the word ‘Rukha,’ which usually means fly or leap. They were using it to express the idea of haunting, as a ghost, inflicting disease or death, and the song was: ‘Yes, we going away to Manga, abroad, or white man’s land, with yoke on our necks; but we shall have no yokes in death, and shall return and haunt and kill you.’ Chorus then struck in, which was the name of the man who had sold each of them, and then followed the general laugh, in which at first I saw no bitterness. Tarembee, an old man, at least one hundred and four years, being one of the sellers, in accordance with African belief, they had no doubt of being soon able, by ghost power, to kill even him.
“The refrain was as if:—‘Oh! oh! oh! bird of freedom, you sold me.’ ‘Oh! oh! oh! I shall haunt you! Oh! oh! oh!’ Laughter told not of mirth, but of tears, such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter. He that is higher than the highest regardeth.