“They charged me with theft and then sold me to another tribe, and they in turn to a black trader. This man drove me for many ‘moons’ along the great road until a white man at D⸺ bought me and sent me here.” “Where am I going now? Who can tell? I suppose I shall be sold to a planter.” There was no need of the slave’s reiterated assertion that she had been nearly ten months marching down to the coast; the locality of her tribe was plainly set forth on the forearm by the indelible cicatrizing knife of her race. The journey from the Batetela tribe of the Congo to the shores of Novo Redondo cannot be much less than 1,500 miles. This was one of the most recent cases we discovered and shows that the slave trade in Portuguese territory is a question of the moment. Fifty years ago, it is said, a ragged urchin ran the streets of San Thomé, holding sometimes for a five _reis_ piece, sometimes for as many kicks, the heads of mules and horses for the affluent slave-planters of that island. That ragged urchin to-day possesses a mansion in three capitals of Europe, and a stately car rushes to and fro with the sovereign lord of some thousands of slaves. The sycophants, time-servers, and others of the crowd of parasitic admirers, who cluster round this august person, care little for the misery beneath that sordid splendour. His wretched slaves spend their days from 5.30 in the morning until sunset cultivating cocoa, that their master may fare sumptuously every day in Europe, and finance dethroned Royalty which is not ashamed to use these ill-gotten funds in half-hearted endeavours to regain a discredited crown. The slaves know nothing of this; one thing only they know is that when the bell rings at sunrise they must devote their energies to the production of the cocoa bean until sunset, and that this weary monotony has in it not a glimmer of hope of cessation. Along that picturesque road, known as the Mother of God road (philosophers might give us some reason why the slavers in all history annex the Holy Virgin), we once met a group of slaves with a sadness written on their faces which seemed almost to cry out, “We are lost souls.” “Are you well fed?” “Yes, white man, we are fed.” “Housed?” “Yes.” “Are you freemen?” “No, we are only slaves.” “Would you like your liberty?” “Aye, would we not, but Master won’t liberate us.”