represented no constituted government, nor had I the
shadow of authority to assume the role of censor, judge
and executioner. Both parties were my friends, at
least I hoped so ; one party, being stronger, by force
and fraud has almost exterminated the other, but
without a commission I may not interfere. Had I
appeared on the scene while one of these many
tragedies was being enacted I might—so contagious
is the effect of strife—have assisted the weaker
party.
After the usual discharge of blank cartridges from
the boats, announcing an arrival, followed by responsive
salvoes from the shore, a canoe put out
from the bank, and hailed us in Swahili, the language
of the oriental coast, to which we replied in
terms of peace, f
We formed a camp below them, and almost immediately
after we bad secured our boats, our Zanzibaris
were shaking hands with the Manyema slaves of Abed
bin Salim, who had invaded and ravaged the country
to obtain slaves and ivory for their master.
We discovered that this horde of banditti—for in
reality and without disguise they were nothing else—
was under the leadership of several- chiefs, but principally
under Karema and Kiburuga. They had started
sixteen months previously from Wane-Kirundu, about
thirty miles below Yinya Njara. For eleven months
the band had been raiding successfully between the
Congo and the Lubiranzi, on the left bank. They
had then undertaken to perform the same cruel work
between the Biyerre and Wane-Kirundu. On looking 1883:
' ' , Not. 27. at my map I find that such a territory within the YomWn.'
area described would cover superficially 16,200 square
geographical miles on the left bank, and 10,500 miles
on the right bank, all of which in statute mileage
would be equal to 34,570 square miles—just 2000
square miles greater, than the island of Ireland—
inhabited by about 1,000,000 people.
The band when it set out from Kirundu numbered,
300 fighting men armed with flint-locks, double-barreled
percussion guns, and a few breech-loaders; their followers,
or domestic slaves and women, doubled this
force.
After spending the morning listening to such of.
their adventures as they chose to relate, I was per-,
mitted in the afternoon to see the human' .harvest
they had gathered, as many of my people had exaggerated
the numbers of the captives they had seen
in the camp.
Their quarters were about 150 yards above the place
we had selected. It was surrounded with a fence made
of the hut walls of the native town of Yangambi, which
lay without in ruins; the square plats of raised and
tamped earth with a few uprights alone indicating
where it stood. The banana groves had been levelled,
and their stalks employed to form the fence around
about their camp.
Within the enclosure was a .series of low' sheds,
extending many lines deep from the immediate edge,
of the clay bank inland, 100 yards; in length the
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