The buying and selling of a few slaves on the coast gives no idea of its horrors. At Unyambembe, sometimes a sad sight is seen. At Uganda the trade begins to assume a wholesale character, yet it wears here a rather business aspect; the slaves by this time become hardened to suffering, "they have no more tears to shed," the chords of sympathy have been severed and they seem stolid and indifferent. At Ujiji, one sees a regular slave-market established. There are "slave-folds and pens," like the stock-yards of railroads for cattle into which the naked wretches are driven by hundreds, to wallow on the ground and be half-starved on food not fit for hogs. By the time they reach here they are mere "ebony skeletons," attenuated, haggard, gaunt human frames. Their very voices have sunk to a mere hoarse whisper, which comes with an unearthly sound from out their parched, withered lips. Low moans, like those that escape from the dying, fill the air, and they reel and stagger when they attempt to stand upright, so wasted are they by the havoc of hunger. They look like a vast herd of black skeletons, and as one looks at them in their horrible sufferings he cannot but exclaim, "how can an all-merciful Father permit such things?" No matter whether on the slow and famishing march or crowded like strayed pigs in the overloaded canoes, it is the same unvarying scene of hunger and horror, on which the cruel slave-trader looks without remorse or pity. It may be asked how are these slaves obtained. The answer is, by a systematic war waged in the populous country of Marungu by banditti, supported by Arabs. These exchange guns and powder for the slaves the former capture, which enables them to keep up the war. These Arabs, who sell the slaves on the coast, furnish the only market for the native banditti of the interior. These latter are mostly natives of Unyamwege who band together to capture all the inhabitants of villages too weak to resist them. Marungu is the great productive field of their Satanic labors. Here almost every small village is independent, recognizing no ruler but its own petty chief. These are often at variance with each other, and instead of banding together to resist a common foe, they look on quietly while one after another is swept by the raiders. In crossing a river, Stanley met two hundred of these wretches chained together, and, on inquiry, found they belonged to the governor of Unyambembe, a former patron of Speke and Burton, and had been captured by an officer of the prince of Zanzibar. This prince had made a treaty with England to put a stop to this horrible traffic, and yet here was one of his officers engaged in it, taking his captives to Zanzibar, and this was his third batch during the year. There are two or three entries in Stanley's journal which throw much light on the way this hunt for slaves is carried on.