“Before I had got thirty yards out, the discharge of two guns in the middle of the crowd told me that slaughter had begun; crowds dashed off from the place, and threw down their wares in confusion, and ran.  At the same time that the three opened fire on the mass of people near the upper end of the market-place, volleys were discharged from a party down near the creek on the panic-stricken women, who dashed at the canoes.  These, some fifty or more, were jammed in the creek, and the men forgot their paddles in the terror that seized all.  The canoes were not to be got out, for the creek was too small for so many; men and women, wounded by the balls, poured into them, and leaped and scrambled into the water, shrieking A long line of heads in the river showed that great numbers struck out for an island a full mile off; in going toward it they had to put the left shoulder to a current of about two miles an hour; if they had struck away diagonally to the opposite bank, the current would have aided them, and, though nearly three miles off, some would have gained land; as it was, the heads above water showed the long line of those that would inevitably perish.

“Shot after shot continued to be fired on the helpless and perishing.  Some of the long line of heads disappeared quietly; whilst other poor creatures threw their arms high, as if appealing to the great Father above, and sank.  One canoe took in as many as it could hold, and all paddled with hands and arms; three canoes, got out in haste, picked up sinking friends, till all went down together, and disappeared.  One man in a long canoe, which could have held forty or fifty, had clearly lost his head; he had been out in the stream before the massacre began, and now paddled up the river nowhere, and never looked to the drowning.  By and by all the heads disappeared; some had turned down stream toward the bank, and escaped.  Dugumbe put people into one of the deserted vessls to save those in the water, and saved twenty-one; but one woman refused to be taken on board, from thinking that she was to be made a slave of; she preferred the chance of life by swimming to the lot of a slave.  The Bagenya women are expert in the water, as they are accustomed to dive for oysters, and those who went down stream may have escaped, but the Arabs themselves estimated the loss of life at between 330 and 400 souls.  The shooting-party near the canoes were so reckless, they killed two of their own people; and a Banyamwezi follower, who got into a deserted canoe to plunder, fell into the water, went down, then came up again, and down to rise no more.

“After the terrible affair in the water, the party of Tagamoio, who was the chief perpetrator, continued to fire on the people there, and fire their villages.  As I write I hear the loud wails on the left bank over those who are there slain, ignorant of their many friends now in the depths of Lualaba.  Oh, let Thy