"October 17th. Arabs organized to-day from three districts, to avenge the murder and eating of one man and ten women by a tribe half-way between Kassessa and Nyangwe. After six days' slaughter, the Arabs returned with three hundred slaves, fifteen hundred goats, besides spears, etc." "October 24th. The natives of Kabonga, near Nyangwe, were sorely troubled two or three days ago by a visit paid them by Uanaamwee in the employ of Mohommed el Said. Their insolence was so intolerable that the natives at last said, 'we will stand this no longer. They will force our wives and daughters before our eyes if we hesitate any longer to kill them, and before the Arabs come we will be off.' Unfortunately, only one was killed, the others took fright and disappeared to arouse the Arabs with a new grievance. To-day, an Arab chief set out for the scene of action with murderous celerity, and besides capturing ten slaves, killed thirty natives and set fire to eight villages--'a small prize,' the Arabs said." "October 17th. The same man made an attack on some fishermen on the left bank of the Lualaba. He left at night and returned at noon with fifty or sixty captives, besides some children." "Are raids of this kind frequent?" asked Stanley. "Frequent!" was the reply, "sometimes six or ten times a month." One of these captives said to Stanley, on the march from Mana to Manibo, "Master, all the plain lying between Mana, Manibo and Nyangwe, when I first came here eight years ago, was populated so thickly that we traveled through gardens, villages and fields every quarter of an hour. There were flocks of goats and black pigs around every village. You can see what it now is." He saw that it was an uninhabited wilderness. At that time, Livingstone saw how the country was becoming depopulated before the slave-traders, but says Stanley, "Were it possible for him to rise from the dead and take a glance at the districts now depopulated, it is probable that he would be more than ever filled with sorrow at the misdoings of these traders." He thinks there is but one way of putting a perpetual end to this infernal traffic, and that is by stopping it in the interior. English and American cruisers on the coast can have but partial success. The suggestion of the Khedive of Egypt is the right one. Annex the interior of Africa to some strong power and establish stations on the great highways over which these traders are compelled to transport their human chattels, where they will be pounced upon and made to give up their captives, and the trade will soon cease from its being too hazardous and unprofitable. Portugal has no right to the west coast, which it claims. Let England, or England and America together, claim and exercise sovereignty over it, and it will need no cruisers on the coast to stop the trade in slaves. At any rate, it is high time the Christian nations of the world put a stop to this disgrace and blot upon humanity. CHAPTER XX.