The Discovery of the Source of the Nile | Page 9

and lizards--there are but few mice--are very abundant, and feed both in the fields and on the stores of the men.
The wily ostrich, bustard, and florikan affect all open places. The guinea-fowl is the most numerous of all game-birds. Partridges come next, but do not afford good sport; and quails are rare. Ducks and snipe appear to love Africa less than any other country; and geese and storks are only found where water most abounds. Vultures are uncommon; hawks and crows much abound, as in all other countries; but little birds, of every colour and note, are discoverable in great quantities near water and by the villages. Huge snails and small ones, as well as fresh-water shells, are very abundant, though the conchologist would find but little variety to repay his labours; and insects, though innumerable, are best sought for after the rains have set in.[FN#3]
The Wanguana or Freed Men
The Wa-n-guana, as their name implies, are men freed from slavery; and as it is to these singular negroes acting as hired servants that I have been chiefly indebted for opening this large section of Africa, a few general remarks on their character cannot be out of place here.
Of course, having been born in Africa, and associated in childhood with the untainted negroes, they retain all the superstitious notions of the true aborigines, though somewhat modified, and even corrupted, by that acquaintance with the outer world which sharpens their wits.
Most of these men were doubtless caught in wars, as may be seen every day in Africa, made slaves of, and sold to the Arabs for a few yards of common cloth, brass wire, or beads. They would then be taken to the Zanzibar market, resold like horses to the highest bidder, and then kept in bondage by their new masters, more like children of his family than anything else. In this new position they were circumcised to make Mussulmans of them, that their hands might be "clean" to slaughter their master's cattle, and extend his creed; for the Arabs believe the day must come when the tenets of Mohammed will be accepted by all men.
The slave in this new position finds himself much better off than he ever was in his life before, with this exception, that as a slave he feels himself much degraded in the social scale of society, and his family ties are all cut off from him--probably his relations have all been killed in the war in which he was captured. Still, after the first qualms have worn off, we find him much attached to his master, who feeds him and finds him in clothes in return for the menial services which he performs. In a few years after capture, or when confidence has been gained by the attachment shown by the slave, if the master is a trader in ivory, he will intrust him with the charge of his stores, and send him all over the interior of the continent to purchase for him both slaves and ivory; but should the master die, according to the Mohammedan creed the slaves ought to be freed. In Arabia this would be the case; but at Zanzibar it more generally happens that the slave is willed to his successor.
The whole system of slaveholding by the Arabs in Africa, or rather on the coast or at Zanzibar, is exceedingly strange; for the slaves, both in individual physical strength and in numbers, are so superior to the Arab foreigners, that if they chose to rebel, they might send the Arabs flying out of the land. It happens, however, that they are spell-bound, not knowing their strength any more than domestic animals, and they even seem to consider that they would be dishonest if they ran away after being purchased, and so brought pecuniary loss on their owners.
There are many positions into which the slave may get by the course of events, and I shall give here, as a specimen, the ordinary case of one who has been freed by the death of his master, that master having been a trader in ivory and slaves in the interior. In such a case, the slave so freed in all probability would commence life afresh by taking service as a porter with other merchants, and in the end would raise sufficient capital to commence trading himself-- first in slaves, because they are the most easily got, and then in ivory. All his accumulations would then go to the Zanzibar market, or else to slavers looking out off the coast. Slavery begets slavery. To catch slaves is the first thought of every chief in the interior; hence fights and slavery impoverish the land, and that is the reason both why Africa does not improve, and why we find men of all tribes and tongues on