^1883. camp was about 300 yards. At the landing-place
Yomburri. below were fifty-four large canoes, varying in carrying
capacity. Each might convey from 10 to 100 people.
The first general impressions are that the camp is
much toe densely peopled for comfort. There are rows
upon rows of dark nakedness, relieved here and there
by the white dresses of the captors. There are lines or
groups of naked forms upright, standing, or. moving
about listlessly; naked bodies are stretched under the
sheds in all positions; naked legs innumerable are
seen in the perspective of prostrate sleepers ; there are
countless naked children, many mere infants, forms of
boyhood and girlhood, and occasionally a drove of absolutely
naked old women bending under a basket of fuel,
or cassava tubers, or bananas, who are driven through
the moving groups by two or three musketeers. On
paying more attention to details, I observe that mostly
all are fettered; youths with iron rings around their
necks, through which a chain, like one of our boat-
anchor chains, is rove, securing the captives by
twenties. The children over ten are secured by three
copper rings, each ringed leg brought together by
the central ring, which accounts for the apparent
listlessness of movement I observed on first coming
in presence of the curious scene. The mothers are
secured by shorter chains, around whom their respective
progeny of infants are grouped, hiding the
cruel iron links that fall in loops or festoons over
their mammas’ breasts. There is not one adult man-
captive amongst them.
Besides the shaded ground strewn over so thickly ^883.^
by the prostrate and upright bodies of captives, romburn.
the relics of the many raids lie scattered or heaped
up in profusion everywhere, and there is scarcely a
square foot of ground not littered with something,
such as drums, spears, swords, assegais, arrows, bows,
knives, iron-ware of native make of every pattern,
paddles innumerable, scoops and balers, wooden troughs,
ivory horns, whistles, buffalo and antelope-horns, ivory
pestles, wooden idols, beads of wood, berries, scraps of
fetishism, sorcerers’ wardrobes, gourds of all sizes,
nets, from the lengthy seine to the small hand-net;
baskets, hampers, shields as large as' doors (of wood, or
of plaited rattan), crockery, large pots to hold eight
gallons, down to the child’s basin; wooden mugs, basins,
and mallets ; grass cloth in shreds, tatters, and pieces;
broken canoes, and others half excavated; native adzes,
hatchets, hammers, iron rods, &c., &c. All these littering
the ground, or in stacks and heaps, with piles
of banana and cassava peelings, flour of cassava, and
sliced tubers drying, make up a number of untidy
pictures and details, through all of which, however,
prominently gleam the eyes of the captives, m a state
of utter and supreme wretchedness.
Little perhaps as my face betrayed my feelings,
other pictures would crowd upon the imagination; and
after realising the extent and depth of the misery presented
to me, I walked about as in a kind of dream,
wherein I saw through the darkness of the night the
stealthy forms of the murderers creeping towards the