The effect of this promise was good to behold, the eyes brightened, there was an elasticity in movement and grateful word of thanks as the slaves resumed their never-ending task. Even the slave in the fell grip of sleeping sickness appeared to share in the joy of a freedom he could not hope to experience.
Not all the slaves are purchased for plantation work, as the following typical instances will shew. Beautiful black women have their price. The day was indeed a hot one as I strolled along the shores of the Atlantic below the mouth of the Congo, when a finely-built young woman met me. Originally captured over 2,000 miles away, her fine figure and bright features had obtained for her captor a high price as “domestic” for the white man. To him it was nothing that she longed to exchange her captive life for that home away in the far interior, or that the roar of the waves was a perpetual reminder of the gentle lappings of the lake shore of Tanganyika. The woman was his slave, purchased with “honest money”—his slave until he ceased to want her, and then—well, he would sell her to the nearest planter and buy another, for healthy young girls are always marketable not only in Portuguese territory but in other parts of West Africa.
Another day two white-clad European travellers might have been seen moving in and out amongst the villages outside a Portuguese town of Angola, exchanging greetings with half-dressed natives. Presently it is realized that this is no casual visit of curious strangers, for it is obvious that the white man’s handshake is but an excuse for a closer scrutiny of the arm, the temple, or the chest, and the natives gather round the travellers as they proceed from group to group. Something now arrests attention, for the white man is sitting down amidst a party of four or five women.
In a few minutes confidence has been gained, and the women submit to an examination of certain marks cut years ago on their arms and foreheads. The white man first tries a sentence in a tongue unknown to the group of interested onlookers, but there is no response from those to whom it was addressed. He tries another, and there is a sudden silence; all eyes are directed to a woman who, after a faint cry of amazement, is gazing fixedly into space, for the white man had by that sentence struck a chord silenced by long years of sorrow and suffering. The woman gazed on silently and intently as if trying to recall a half-forgotten past. She travels in thought back over yonder mountains, across the hot plain, and on by rippling streams and through valleys thick with ripe corn, away across the Cuanza river, on for months to Lake Dilolo, where she sees again as in a vision the white man who bought her from the native slave-trader. In fancy she leaves the cornfields of Angola, crosses the upper Kasai, and is away north beyond Lusambo, and westward to the little Congo village with its deep green plantain groves and manioca fields.
A remark breaks the spell, and she realizes that it was but a dream, for she is still a captive; but the white man speaking her native tongue is no dream—he is still there speaking the language that sounds like the far-off music of another life. The light of hope dawns in her eyes as she turns on the traveller, pleading, “White man, can’t you take me home?”
THE PLANTERS’ CASE
It must not be supposed that all the San Thomé planters on the island believe in, or defend, present conditions, any more than it must be supposed that, without exception, they are habitually guilty of inhuman maltreatment of the slaves. The charge of maintaining slavery most of them emphatically deny, and in support of their contention point to legal contracts which cover the original transaction by which the labour was obtained. They also remind the investigator that the labourers are paid. There are, however, some honest planters who admit that the original “contract” was not altogether genuine, and the statements made by the planters and the slaves respectively with regard to the wages paid, differ so absurdly that one is compelled to dismiss both.
SLAVES ON COCOA ROÇA, PRINCIPE ISLAND.
