It is supposed that the agents of European origin, Portuguese for the most part, are only rascals whom their country has rejected, convicts, escaped prisoners, old slave-drivers whom the authorities have been unable to hang—­in a word, the refuse of humanity.  Such was Negoro, such was Harris, now in the service of one of the greatest contractors of Central Africa, Jose-Antonio Alvez, well known by the traders of the province, about whom Lieutenant Cameron has given some curious information.

The soldiers who escort the captives are generally natives in the pay of the traders.  But the latter have not the monopoly of those raids which procure the slaves for them.  The negro kings also make atrocious wars with each other, and with the same object.  Then the vanquished adults, the women and children, reduced to slavery, are sold by the vanquishers for a few yards of calico, some powder, a few firearms, pink or red pearls, and often even, as Livingstone says, in periods of famine, for a few grains of maize.

The soldiers who escorted old Alvez’s caravan might give a true idea of what African armies are.

It was an assemblage of negro bandits, hardly clothed, who brandished long flint-lock guns, the gun-barrels garnished with a great number of copper rings.  With such an escort, to which are joined marauders who are no better, the agents often have all they can do.  They dispute orders, they insist on their own halting places and hours, they threaten to desert, and it is not rare for the agents to be forced to yield to the exactions of this soldiery.

Though the slaves, men or women, are generally subjected to carry burdens while the caravan is on the march, yet a certain number of porters accompany it.  They are called more particularly “Pagazis,” and they carry bundles of precious objects, principally ivory.  Such is the size of these elephants’ teeth sometimes, of which some weigh as much as one hundred and sixty pounds, that it takes two of these “Pagazis” to carry them to the factories.  Thence this precious merchandise is exported to the markets of Khartoum, of Zanzibar and Natal.

On arriving, these “Pagazis” are paid the price agreed upon.  It consists in twenty yards of cotton cloth, or of that stuff which bears the name of “Merikani,” a little powder, a handful of cowry (shells very common in that country, which serve as money), a few pearls, or even those of the slaves who would be difficult to sell.  The slaves are paid, when the trader has no other money.

Among the five hundred slaves that the caravan counted, there were few grown men.  That is because, the “Razzia” being finished and the village set on fire, every native above forty is unmercifully massacred and hung to a neighboring tree.  Only the young adults of both sexes and the children are intended to furnish the markets.  After these men-hunts, hardly a tenth of the vanquished survive.  This explains the frightful depopulation which changes vast territories of equatorial Africa into deserts.