The Arabs have the utmost contempt for the negroes, and, so far from trying to convert them, purposely leave them to perdition; if they made them Mahometans they would be their equals, and this they do not at all desire.
Such is the character and religious belief of these unhappy people. We will see later on what the church can do for them, but in this inquiry one important subject must be considered—that is, the slave-trade. Slavery on the White Nile is admirably described by Sir Samuel Baker in his Nile Basin, and it is much the same on the east coast. The petty native chieftains are constantly at war with each other, the object being plunder. They try to surprise a neighboring village at night, fire it, and surround it with armed men. As the luckless inhabitants rush out to escape from the flames, their enemies shoot down the men and seize the women and children for slaves, carrying off the cattle. Sometimes a thieving Arab slaving party joins one chief who has a grudge against a neighboring village, assisting him to destroy it in the manner just described and sharing the plunder. The Arabs then manage to quarrel with their allies, and so obtain their goods also.
As long as this state of things exists mission work in the interior will be impossible. The Protestant English mission, under Bishop Mackenzie, some years ago established itself in the interior near the Zambesi, and gathered together some hundreds of natives whose improvement they hoped gradually to effect. But a powerful tribe attacking the one amongst which they dwelt, they had to perform the uncongenial task of driving off the invaders with their rifles. Their friends were saved for the time, but many of the missionaries had died from fever, and the small remainder was obliged to retire. Shortly after this the tribe with which they had been was swept away and destroyed. The slave-trade naturally prevents all progress and the increase of population. It also weakens all family ties, parents killing their offspring if they are in want. Great cruelties are practised, not only in the capture of slaves, but in their transit to the place of destination. The Arabs are very improvident, and sometimes, having failed to provide sufficient food for their caravan, they leave some of the slaves in the desert to starve, not even removing the yokes by which they are fastened together. I was told of a woman who was carrying a bale of cloth, and on the journey gave birth to a child. She could not carry both the baby and the goods; the latter were the more valuable, so the infant was brained against the nearest tree and left on the ground.
About four years ago a treaty was signed between the Sultan of Zanzibar and the British government, by which the importation of slaves was prohibited, but the Arabs were permitted to retain the slaves they already possessed. Strong pressure had to be brought to bear on the Arabs to compel them to sign this treaty; but even now a considerable traffic is carried on by the east coast with Arabia, Pemba, and Madagascar. The negroes are crowded into the slave-dhows, and their sufferings from hunger and filth must be extreme on a voyage. Many die and are thrown overboard, and the remainder land in a miserably reduced condition. But the household slaves are treated kindly and well fed; this the owner finds politic, or the slave might desert. They are addressed as “Ndugu-yango”—“My brother”—and considered part of the family.
There are two sorts of slaves in the islands—the Muwallid, or domestic, born in slavery, and the wild imported slave. The former class are much better treated than the others. Even young captured slaves are not so tractable as they, but the older ones are very obstinate and contrary and given to thieving and disorder. Sometimes in revenge they attempt the life of their master or try to get him into serious trouble, yet they are seldom punished for it, any more than with us a vicious animal would be. They are slaves, and it is their nature, and they themselves give this as their excuse when convicted of the most abominable crimes. But slaves often rise to a very important position; and as Abraham sent his servant to Mesopotamia to negotiate his son’s marriage, so slaves are entrusted by their masters with the command of trading caravans to the interior, they preferring to remain comfortably at home. Free negroes have been known to sell themselves for slaves, and, when asked about it, to reply: “What can a dog do without a master?” Also, slaves often own slaves of their own. The pilot of Zanzibar, an official of some importance called Buckett, was a slave, and, when seen habited in a naval officer’s old coat and a handsome turban on his head, he appeared a person of much distinction.
It is difficult to see how slavery can be kept up at Zanzibar, now that importation is forbidden; for the annual loss from death and desertion is thirty per cent., and the average annual importation a few years ago was estimated at thirteen thousand. Slavery, as it has been there, is an abominable institution and a complete bar to improvement.
Though the negro is so ignorant, superstitious, and debased, yet it has been abundantly shown that he is capable of improvement. I once visited the well-ordered estate of Kokotoni, in the north of Zanzibar Island, the property of Capt. Fraser. I found it in charge of an intelligent Scotchman, who said that they had about five hundred laborers resident on the plantation—half men and half women. They required them all to marry, gave them cottages, provision, grounds, and two dollars and a half each per month, and they were an orderly and well-conducted people. The overseer had taught them different trades—as that of wheelwright, necessary for the work of the estate—and, though they sometimes deserted in true negro fashion, yet the truants were sure to return again.
At Zanzibar and Bagomoyo, twenty-five miles off on the mainland, at the mouth of the Kingani River, the Société du Saint-Esprit, the parent house of which is in Paris, have most flourishing establishments. The town house is in the centre of Zanzibar, its corrugated iron roof, towering above the neighboring buildings, being a conspicuous object. On entering you will be greeted in good French by very civil negro boys dressed in blue blouse and trowsers and wearing a black glazed hat. They will conduct you to a spacious sitting-room decorated with pictures of religious subjects, and before long the superior, Père Etienne, appears. He is a tall, slight man, and has not lost the cavalry swagger which he acquired as captain in a Lancers regiment, and which forms a strange contrast to his black soutane. He is a most affable and agreeable priest, and conducts one round the interesting establishment. There is a beautiful little chapel on the first floor, and when I was last in it the walls were being stencilled. In the workshops trades are taught to the boys by the lay brethren, such as working in metals, carpentering, and boat-building. The pupils belong to the mission, they having been either handed over to it by the British consul from captured slave-dhows, or purchased by the mission in the slave-market in the old times before slavery was abolished. At Bagomoyo there is a still larger establishment under the care of Père Horner, where about ten clergy and the same number of sisters have charge of an agricultural colony on which are several hundred Christian negroes. At first the mission did not mean to Christianize the natives, thinking that they were so degraded that it would take several generations to raise them to that point; but they found them capable of more than was originally expected. The mission establishment is half a mile from the town of Bagomoyo, which contains about five thousand people, but it has the appearance of a small town itself. The grounds are laid out in a most orderly manner; it is a pleasure to walk along the straight, well-kept paths between fields of maize, millet, and sweet potatoes.
The captain of the ship in which I served was one day up the Kingani River in his boat, accompanied by a young Alsatian lay brother from the mission. Shooting a hippopotamus cow, the calf, only a week or two old, would not leave the mother’s carcase, and the captain, who had to return to his ship, giving money to the brother, advised him to obtain assistance and catch the little animal, which he presented to the mission. A few months after, as we were visiting the good fathers, the lay brother took us to a large tank surrounded with a fence, which they had formed for the accommodation of the hippopotamus. Standing at the gate, the brother called the animal by name, and it came snorting out of the water, ran up to its master, looking up into his face, and followed us about the garden and into the house like a dog. Here he was fed from a bottle with flour and milk. He was taken to the Zoölogical Gardens at Berlin shortly afterwards, and must have sold for at least six thousand dollars. Hippopotami are inimical to the crops of rice which grow near the rivers, as they come on shore in the night and devour enormous quantities of the young tender shoots, so that the fields have to be carefully watched. But more dangerous animals are found on the coast, and Père Horner told us a story of a huge lion which had carried off several of their cattle. They constructed a trap of a deserted hut, into which they enticed the animal, which, finding himself imprisoned, aroused all the establishment from their midnight slumbers by his roarings. He was shot by one of the brethren.
The fathers give their guests a good dinner of many courses in true French style, but one should not conclude, as does Stanley in his How I Found Livingstone, that champagne is their ordinary beverage. On the contrary, when I was there they could offer us nothing but a little white rum which had been sent them from our ship, and the champagne with which they welcomed Mr. Stanley was some of a small present which they had received.