He found renewed occasion to acknowledge in the warmest terms the kindness he received from the Portuguese; and his prayers that God would reward and bless them were not the less sincere that in many important matters he could not approve of their ways.

In traversing the road backward along which he had already come, not many things happened that demand special notice in this brief sketch.  We find him both in his published book and still more in his private Journal repeating his admiration of the country and its glorious scenery.  This revelation of the marvelous beauty of a country hitherto deemed a sandy desert was one of the most astounding effects of Livingstone’s travels on the public mind.  But the more he sees of the people the more profound does their degradation appear, although the many instances of remarkable kindness to himself, and occasional cases of genuine feeling one toward another, convinced him that there was a something in them not quite barbarised.  On one point he was very clear—­the Portuguese settlements among them had not improved them.  Not that he undervalued the influences which the Portuguese had brought to bear on them; he had a much more favorable opinion of the Jesuit missions than Protestants have usually allowed themselves to entertain, and felt both kindly and respectfully toward the padres, who in the earlier days of these settlements had done, he believed, a useful work.  But the great bane of the Portuguese settlements was slavery.  Slavery prevented a good example, it hindered justice, it kept down improvement.  If a settler took a fancy to a good-looking girl, he had only to buy her, and make her his concubine.  Instead of correcting the polygamous habits of the chiefs and others, the Portuguese adopted like habits themselves.  In one thing indeed they were far superior to the Boers—­in their treatment of the children born to them by native mothers.  But the whole system of slavery gendered a blight which nothing could counteract; to make Africa a prosperous land, liberty must be proclaimed to the captive, and the slave system, with all its accursed surroundings, brought conclusively to an end.  Writing to Mrs. Livingstone from Bashinge, 20th March, 1855, he gives, some painful particulars of the slave-trade.  Referring to a slave-agent with whom he had been, he says: 

“This agent is about the same in appearance as Mebalwe, and speaks Portuguese as the Griquas do Dutch.  He has two chainsful of women going to be sold for the ivory.  Formerly the trade went from the interior into the Portuguese territory; now it goes the opposite way.  This is the effect of the Portuguese love of the trade:  they cannot send them abroad on account of our ships of war on the coast, yet will sell them to the best advantage.  These women are decent-looking, as much so as the general run of Kuruman ladies, and’ were caught lately in a skirmish the Portuguese had with their tribe; and they will be sold for about three