BOOKS.

FRESH EVIDENCE ON PORTUGUESE SLAVERY.* THE evidence as to slavery in Portuguese West Africa is strong enough in all conscience, as everyone must admit who has read the Foreign Office papers on the subject; but it • Thinking Black : Twenty-Two Years Without a Break in the Long Onus al Central Africa. By D. Crawford, F.B.G.S. London: Morgan and Scott. 17a. 6d., net.]

might have been felt, even by those who are absolutely con- vinced of the reality of Portuguese slavery, that to make the ease complete fuller testimony was necessary as to the sources and conduct of slavery in Angola. The evidence is complete as to the slaves in the islands of San Thome and

Principe ; the technical distinction between servicaes and slaves deceives no impartial person. Again, there is a certain amount of independent testimony by travellers, notably that of Mr. Nevinson, as to the slave gangs being driven

down to the coast of the mainland. But the remoter parts of Angola have been a field unexplored by those Englishmen who have laid before their countrymen the evidence which has compelled us to say that so long as we undertake by treaty to defend Portuguese possessions we are undertaking to defend slavery. The importance of the book before us is that the author, Mr. Crawford, has lived, unknown to all but a few of his friends at home, in the remote parts of Angola, and has watched the slave trade carried on as part of the daily routine. His evidence is virtually undesigned evidence so far as it touches the point we have in mind. His book is not written expressly to expose the Portuguese administration. It is therefore the strongest sort of evidence.

For twenty-two years Mr. Crawford, who was apparently attached to none of the better-known missionary organiza- tions, lived in the long grass of Central Africa. Now, we gather, he has returned home, and never was evidence as to Portuguese slavery more opportune than his. His book is a strange and, in some ways, a brilliant production. There is not much chronological arrangement ; the joints of the narrative are everywhere loose. And the ejaculatory style, which reminds one of Carlyle, is so much a habit with the author that one doubts whether he would find it easy to write or think in any other manner. He is obviously a man of scholarship and wide and careful reading, and his wayward fancy bears along on its full flood allegory, metaphysical reflection, and psychology, which convey to the reader flashes of illumination as to the character of the negro.

Mr. Crawford landed at Benguella when he arrived in Africa and began a journey which eventually carried him right across the continent to Portuguese East Africa. His principal accomplishment was the founding of a mission town on the western shore of Lake Mwern in the Belgian Congo.

We should like to quote much about negro philosophy, negro mendacity, cannibalism, human sacrifice, hippo hunting on the lakes and so on, but we must confine ourselves to the question of slavery. On this subject the author's information comes with all the force of complete unexpectedness. So valuable indeed is what he says as a link in the chain of evidence against the Portuguese that we find ourselves often impatient of the literary airiness that involves a certain lack of definition when we feel that we might have had an indictment marked by the judicial accuracy of a highly educated eyewitness.

That however, as we said, is really the strength of the evidence —it is so plainly incidental. So we must hold our patience, and hope that if we are not mistaken as to the carefulness of Mr. Crawford's observations he may put his experiences oa record in some way that will further aid those who are determined that the Anglo-Portuguese Treaty shall riot be allowed to mask slavery without the strongest and widest protest that is possible. The Portuguese Legation in

London from time to time issues denials of the British asser- tions as to Portuguese slavery. In Portuguese West Africa, we are asked to believe, all is for the beat in the best of all possible worlds. These statements mean no more than that the Portuguese planters in the cocoa islands frequently treat their slaves as well as the conditions permit, and have themselves an art of life that makes their home life agreeable and picturesque. This Portuguese faculty of making life attractive is freely recognized by the Rev. John Harris in his recent valuable book. No opponent of slavery need be at pains to deny it. but it is perfectly irrelevant. Now let us quote what Mr. Crawford says :—

" Is far as can be done in cold print let me say what I saw. My date is in August, the location a forest in which Latitude 120 South is intersected by Longitude 21° East. Who could ever forget the nightmare of this monster slave caravan we meet in the Chokwe country? Flying as we both are in opposite directions through the hungry country, you are bewildered and exagperated to see this staggering mass of captive hummity heading for the Vest Coast. Through desolate marshy lands have they come;

across the burning sands of the Bilumadzi flat have they dragged:. Lunde and Luvale lands are now passed, but the Ocean is still. a weary way off. Already months on the road, hunger is gnawing- at the vitals of the whole cruel caravan, and dozens of hectoring- brutes are clubbing on their 'moving money' (olombongo) from behind. The coldest-blooded creature south of the Arctic circle. could not contemplate that via dolorosa without revolt, for here is. the'open sore' streaming with life's blood before your eyes_ Spring expostulatingly on one of these obese and orthodox. slavers in the forest, and he tells you with alacrity that the Portuguese buy them all up. Yea, further, with engag- ing frankness this brutal black gives you the name and address of reputable merchants in Benguella and Catumbella who snap up as much black ivory as possible : are they not going to ship them over to San Thome for the cultivation of cocoa ? Look, then, at this caravan, taking nearly three hours to march past, a horde of eight hundred souls, all doomed to exile for life. Some tottering old men there, mere shrivelled sacks of bones who at any moment may need to lie down by the roadside and die. Dozens of women there, staggering along with little babies born and unborn, for this famished, "hungry country" demands a rushing speed for the caravan. Item : One mother, the grief-lines furrowing her face, goaded on with baby just born that day by the roadside, maternity convalescence, say, one hour and a fraction. Saddest sight of all, crowds of little emaciated boys and girls all sold for a song in the Congo State, the little legs at last giving out. Yet only four months before every one of them had, radiant youth bubbling in his veins. Who can forget that, Lubans born and bred as they are, these same little souls sing a song in their own country about the joys of a jaded piccaninny on the trail when nearing home at last?

If toiling on a journey dreary A little toddling child is weary, One whisper of the magic "Home," How strong the little legs become! No longer weariness they feel For they are stiff like bars of steel.'

But here they are, far from home, that long wriggling horror of a- slave track before and behind them, so thin and hollow-eyed you, can only think of them as a moan materialized into flesh. Head- ing for the slave-pen at Benguella, there is no such magic word 'Home' to stiffen their back in resolve to reach it. One of these girls had fallen behind, strength gone, load of rubber thrown on the ground, so, emerging from the bush, I was just in time to see. her owner club her head, yelling out a threat with each stroke.. This was more than I could stand, and as Christ saw nothing worse than that among the Temple dove-sellers I sprang at this burly Bihean with a stick to administer unto him a not undeserved. trouncing—but of course he showed a clean pair of heels. One tiny girl I redeemed from a dark death by the roadside, a girl who is now a happy Christian mother on Lake Mweru.

Item: Literally sold for a song was one such little boy whose name became Sikispence, his market value one coloured handker- chief at 6d. Item: A native named 'Truss of Calico' bought one youngster for is. 4d.; a cheap chattel this, stolen while mother was off in the field. Item: Dilunga's child, too, was sold for an old waterproof coat. Item : Ndala was a boy who fetched, as market price, a small bag of corn. Item : Idusole and her child were also sold for grain, two small bags for two human beings. 'Man eats corn, but corn can eat man,' their proverb runs.

Proof positive? Here is a blunt fellow who has done the thing- for years, no Portuguese he. Quite a prodigy of obesity for the climate, he has bought and sold many a slave. In his ample mouth there is an ample pipe, and between the puffs he boasts of his- slave-trading ; two slaves for one rifle, is an instance. Commit- ting himself, as he did, to an I 0 II for the accessory cartridges, here you have frank fact and no fiction. Daring to marry in after years, this union was so degrading that when he died, his widow,. on the 18th of April, 1907, sold off seven slaves, two going to Snr. liatavola '—to give the name of place for persons. This Senhor,. of course, offered good prices for some girls she had. Figures are not at all difficult to get at, for often a blunt question receives as blunt an answer, this especially with the 'old timer,' a high- and-dry Tory. A slaver by principle as well as practice, 're- does not believe in exposing too much of the white of the eyes on this subject of slavery. With Dickens' policeman he believes that words is bosh,' and the polite modern servicaes' is too fancy a word for him. Asked point-blank to give the. percentage of slave mortality en route to ocean, this out-and-outer makes a careful calculation of the losses. Far from parrying such a preposterously pointed question, 'Well,' says he, 'they vary a good deal ; from some districts they are hardier than from others. If we are lucky we may get via out of every ten alive to- Bihe, and if unlucky, perhaps only three out of en.'" The slave trade seems to be prosecuted with all the tricks of a long-established wickedness :— " But the really profitable part of this bad business is 'the runaway slave' department. Here you have stay-at-homes who. often make more out of it than the zealous man-hunters of Luba- land. Take Senr. Z., for instance, and work out with him this spicy little sum in slave arithmetic. Problem—how to make one slave produce twenty-three other slaves plus oxen, rubber, and' pigs thrown in. Now this subterfuge is really as simple as it is common, for he sets the ball a-rolling by so maltreating this one. slave that run away she must, and now woe to all who harbour her! She darts into a hamlet, and breathlessly elated, Snr. Z. darts after her, for that townlet must pay, yes, cash down, ten- slaves plus ten ipako (i.e. any other legal currency). Our peppery old colonial rubs his hands with glee at this brisk business, but he- is on for more. (Rsader, are yon working out this sunk in Metal arithmetic : one slave has now captured ten more, including etceteras?) Next move is nothing new, the same old bait slave is going to catch more. K— is the man who is next mulcted. -and he pays one young woman, a pig, and a load of rubber; business is not so brisk, you see. There is better fishing farther on, however, and the village of Lak pays up two slaves, two oxen, -and two loads of rubber, all on the vile old plea of harbouring ,Onesimus. Can we not now strike the grand total and get done with it P No, we must include a closing (?) item. Farther along there was an open gateway, and this hunted-down slave darts in, only to -doom the villagers to a final fine—ten slaves, cash down ! Now you may strike your terrible total. Twenty-three slaves plus two .oxen plus one pig plus three loads of rubber for one runaway slave. Plain arithmetic all this, not rhetoric. Deduction: The Portuguese put a premium on the maltreatment of slaves. Therefore the old specious pro-slavery argument, running 'The man who treats his lame badly is a fool,' So., this argument, I say, is as rotten E L9 is the audacious analogy between a horse and a human being. But there is worse to come. Take another vile expedient having the same sad objective, I mean, the swelling of this Westward-going stream of slavery : the Shylock system' among the natives. Here is the trader's chance, and the borrowing native is soon involved in a quagmire of trouble, to wit, a 1,000 per cent. extortion on the borrowed goods. (Not an E.O.E. invoice, by any means, for this Arrogant Shylock never makes an error and never omits anything.) Snr. is a case in point : as usual, he does not want his calico back, he wants payment, not in cash but kind, and that kind the best kind, yea, the human kind. Therefore this knave grabs at nine women as against his debt for goods, an account this the natives stoutly refuse to pay because they have already paid it in -blood—be it noted the blood of the bulleted debtor, killed by Shylock. Appealing to the Fort, the Chefe votes for his com- patriot creditor, arguing that as Shyloek has spilled the said blood -a few miles beyond the Fort's jurisdiction, obviously the deed .must be ignored kid the -nine slaves retained for the debt. Mark yen, here yen have blood shed and blood winked at. The Sekeseke -case is akin to this : a gentleman he, known to his Catumbella

-friends as Senhor B—. Beating a slave for days into a pitiful pulp, of course-the said slave died, and was buried at mid-. :night in the corner of his garden. Was Senhor P— B punished for this murder, and if so, when, and where, and by -whom ? "

We have made long extracts, but they are so vivid and so -damning that it was worth while to quote such passages in full. Mr. Crawford must know very much more about the slave trade in Angola and the Belgian Congo than he has had _an opportunity of saying in this book. We must repeat our lope that his apparently exceptional experiences may be .placed at the service of those Englishmen. who are anxious to prove to what ifvfainies Great Britain is guaranteeing her

,protection.