At first this trade was extremely easy and profitable, since the raw material lay near at hand in plenty.  By degrees, however, the neighbouring communities had been worked out.  Countless numbers of them were killed, while the pick of the population passed under the slave yoke, and those of them who survived, vanished in ships to unknown lands.  Thus it came about that the slavers were obliged to go further afield and even to conduct their raids upon the borders of the territory of the great Mazitu people, the inland race of Zulu origin of whom I have spoken.  According to our informants, it was even rumoured that they proposed shortly to attack these Mazitus in force, relying on their guns to give them the victory and open to them a new and almost inexhaustible store of splendid human merchandise.  Meanwhile they were cleaning out certain small tribes which hitherto had escaped them, owing to the fact that they had their residence in bush or among difficult hills.

The track we followed was the recognised slave road.  Of this we soon became aware by the numbers of skeletons which we found lying in the tall grass at its side, some of them with heavy slave-sticks still upon their wrists.  These, I suppose, had died from exhaustion, but others, as their split skulls showed had been disposed of by their captors.

On the eighth day of our march we struck the track of a slave caravan.  It had been travelling towards the coast, but for some reason or other had turned back.  This may have been because its leaders had been warned of the approach of our party.  Or perhaps they had heard that another caravan, which was at work in a different district, was drawing near, bringing its slaves with it, and wished to wait for its arrival in order that they might join forces.

The spoor of these people was easy to follow.  First we found the body of a boy of about ten.  Then vultures revealed to us the remains of two young men, one of whom had been shot and the other killed by a blow from an axe.  Their corpses were roughly hidden beneath some grass, I know not why.  A mile or two further on we heard a child wailing and found it by following its cries.  It was a little girl of about four who had been pretty, though now she was but a living skeleton.  When she saw us she scrambled away on all fours like a monkey.  Stephen followed her, while I, sick at heart, went to get a tin of preserved milk from our stores.  Presently I heard him call to me in a horrified voice.  Rather reluctantly, for I knew that he must have found something dreadful, I pushed my way through the bush to where he was.  There, bound to the trunk of a tree, sat a young woman, evidently the mother of the child, for it clung to her leg.

Thank God she was still living, though she must have died before another day dawned.  We cut her loose, and the Zulu hunters, who are kind folk enough when they are not at war, carried her to camp.  In the end with much trouble we saved the lives of that mother and child.  I sent for the two Mazitus, with whom I could by now talk fairly well, and asked them why the slavers did these things.