At that time the merchants of the Portuguese inland town of Tette, on the Zambesi, were carrying on the slave-trade with unusual vigour, for this reason, that they found it difficult to obtain ivory except in exchange for slaves. In former years they had carried on a trade in ivory with a tribe called the Banyai, these Banyai being great elephant-hunters, but it happened that they went to war with another tribe named the Matabele, who had managed to steal from them all their women and children. Consequently, the forlorn Banyai said to the Tette merchants, when they went to trade with them as they had been accustomed to do, “We do not want your merchandise. Bring us women and children, and you shall have as much ivory as you wish.”
These good people of Tette—being chiefly half-caste Portuguese, and under Portuguese government, and claiming, as they do, to be the possessors of that region of Africa—are so utterly incapable of holding their own, that they are under the necessity of paying tribute to a tribe of savages who come down annually to Tette to receive it, and who, but for that tribute, would, as they easily could, expel them from the land. These merchants of Tette, moreover, in common with all the Portuguese in Africa, are by the laws of Portugal prohibited from engaging in the export slave-trade. They are not, however, forbidden to engage temporarily in the “domestic slave-trade,” hence they had sent out slaving parties—in other words, robbers, kidnappers, murderers—who hired the warlike Ajawa tribe to aid them in killing the Manganja men, and robbing them of their wives and little ones, by which means they were enabled to supply the demand for such “cattle” among the Banyai, and thus obtained the desired supply of ivory! So vigorously had this slave traffic been carried on, at the time of which we write, that no fewer than two hundred people—mostly women and children—were carried out of the hill-country every week. (See The Universities’ Mission to Central Africa, page 112.)
In a short time the negro returned to the place where Harold and Disco were seated, and said that he believed his white deliverers were true men, but added that he and his people had no home to go to; their village having been burnt, and all the old people and warriors killed or dispersed by Marizano, who was a terribly cruel man. In proof of this assertion he said that only the day before, Marizano had shot two of the women for attempting to untie their thongs; a man had been killed with an axe because he had broken-down with fatigue; and a woman had her infant’s brains dashed out because she was unable to carry it, as well as the load assigned to her.
“It is difficult to decide what one should do in these circumstances,” said Harold to Disco. “You know it would never do to leave these helpless people here to starve; but if we take them on with us our progress will be uncommonly slow.”
“We’d better take ’em back,” said Disco.
“Back! Where to?”
“W’y, to the last village wot we passed through. It ain’t more than a day’s march, an’ I’m sure the old feller as is capting of it would take care o’ the lot.”
“There is good advice in that, yet I grudge to go back,” said Harold; “if there were a village the same distance in advance, I would rather take them on.”
“But there ain’t,” returned Disco. “Hallo! I say, wot’s wrong with Tony?”
The interpreter came forward with a look of much excitement as he spoke.