ployed, for even the slaves of the gover-churchman, dissenter, learned or unlearned, nor knew that they were doing wrong, and liberal or bigoted, would certainly become fled, leaving the whole of the captives on a blessing by introducing a better system our hands. Bishop Mackenzie received than that which has prevailed for ages. them gladly, and in a fertile country, with land free, in the course of a year or two, might, by training some sixty boys to habits of industry, have rendered his mission independent, as far as native support was concerned. Having been engaged in the formation of two missions in another part of the country, and having been familiar with the history of several, I never knew a mission undertaken under more favorable auspices. This would be the opinion of all who have commenced similar enterprises in other parts, and it was that of the good bishop himself. He was so thoroughly unselfish, and of such a genial disposition, that he soon gained the confidence of people, and this is the first great step to success. The best way of treating these degraded people must always be very much like that which is pursued in ragged schools. Their bodily wants must be attended to as the basis of all efforts at their elevation. The slave trade is the gigantic evil which meets us at every step in the country. We cannot move through any part without meeting captured men and women, bound, and sometimes gagged; so no good can be done if this crying evil is not grappled with. The good bishop had some two hundred people entirely at his disposal, and would soon have presented to the country an example of a free community, supported by its own industry, where fair dealing could be met, which undoubtedly would have created immense influence; for wherever the English name is known it is associated with freedom and fair-play. Some seem to take a pleasure in running down their fellow countrymen, but the longer I live I like them the better. They carry with them some sense of law and justice, and a spirit of kindliness, and were I in a difficulty I should prefer going to an Englishman, in preference to any other, for aid. And as for English women, they do, undoubtedly, make the best wives, nothers, sisters, and daughters in the world. It is this conviction that makes me, in my desire to see slavery abolished, and human happiness promoted, ardently wish to have some of our country women transplanted to a region where they would both give and receive benefit, where every decent Christian Englishman, whether

VOL. LXIII.—NO. 3

We conducted Bishop Mackenzie and party up to the highlands, and, after spending three or four days with them, returned, and never had any more connection with the conduct of that mission. We carried a boat past Murchison's Cataracts. By these the river descends at five different leaps, of great beauty, 1200 feet in a distance of about forty miles. Above that we have sixty miles of fine deep rivers, flowing placidly out of Lake Agassa. As we sailed into this fine freshwater lake, we were naturally anxious to know its depth ten, twelve, twenty, thirty fathoms-then no bottom with all our line, and John Neil, our sailor, at last pronounced it fit for the Great Eastern to sail in. We touched the bottom in a bay with a line of one hundred fathoms, and a mile out, could find no bottom at one hundred and sixteen fathoms. It contains plenty of fish, and great numbers of natives daily engage in catching them with nets, hooks, spears, torches, and poison. The water remains about 72°, and the crocodiles, having plenty of fish to eat, rarely attack men. It is from fifty to sixty miles broad, and we saw at least 225 miles of its length. As seen from the lake, it seems surrounded by mountains, and from these furious storms come suddenly down, and raise high seas, which are dangerous for a boat, but the native canoes are formed so as to go easily along the surface. mountains on the west were ascended last year, and found to be only the edges of a great plateau, three thousand feet above the sea. This is cool, well watered, and well peopled with the Manganja and the Maori, some of whom possess cattle; and I have no doubt but that, the first hardships over, and properly housed and fed, Europeans would enjoy life and comfort. This part of Africa has exactly the same form as Western India at Bombay, only this is a little higher and cooler. Well, having now a fair way into the highlands by means of the Zambesi and Shire, and a navigable course of river and lake of two miles across, from which all the slaves for the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, as well as some for Cuba, went, and nearly all the inhabitants of this denselypeopled country actually knowing how

25

The apparent

to cultivate cotton, it seemed likely that | Viscount Lavridio, the Viscount de-lu-da their strong propensity to trade might be Bandeira, and others, are as anxious to easily turned to the advantage of our own see the abolition of the slave-trade as country as well as theirs. And here, I could be desired; but the evil is done by beg to remark, that on my first journey, the assertion in Europe of dominion in my attention not having then been turned Africa, when it is quite well known that to the subject, I noticed only a few cases they were only a few half-castes, the chilof its cultivation, but in this I saw much dren of converts and black women, who more than I had previously any idea of. have actually to pay tribute to the pure The cotton is short in the staple, strong, natives. Were they of the smallest and like wool in the hand-as good as benefit to Portugal; if any one ever upland American. A second has been made a fortune and went home to spend introduced, as is seen in the name being it in Lisbon, or if any pleasure whatever foreign cotton, and a third variety of very could be derived by the Portuguese govsuperior quality, very long in the fibre, ernment from spending £5000 annually though usually believed to belong to on needy governors, who all connive at South America, was found right in the the slave-trade, the thing could be undermiddle of the continent, in the country of stood. But Portugal gains nothing but a the Makalolo. A tree of it was eight shocking bad name, as the first that began inches in diameter, or like an ordinary the slave-trade, and the last to end it. To apple tree. And all these require re- us it is a serious matter to see Lord Palplanting not oftener than once in three merston's policy, which has been so emiyears. There is no danger of frosts either nently successful on the west, so largely to injure the crops. No sooner, however, neutralized on the east coast. A great had we begun our labors among the Man-nation like ours cannot get rid of the obganja than the African Portuguese, by ligations to other members of the great instigating the Ajawa, with arms and community of nations. The police of the ammunition, to be paid for in slaves, produced the utmost confusion. Village after village was attacked and burned, for the Manganja, armed only with bows and arrows, could not stand before firearms. The bowman's way of fighting is to be in ambush, and shoot his arrows unawares, while those with guns, making a great noise, cause the bowmen to run away. The women and children become captives. This process of slave-hunting went on for some months, and then a panic seized the Manganja nation. All fled down to the river, only anxious to get that between them and their enemies; but they had left all their food behind them, and starvation of thousands ensued. The Shire valley, where thousands lived at our first visit, was converted into literally a valley of dry bones. One cannot now walk a mile without seeing a human skeleton; open a hut in the now deserted villages, and there lie the unburied skeletons. In some I opened, there were two skeletons and a little one, rolled up in a mat, between them. I have always hated putting the blame of being baffled upon any one else, from the conviction that a man ought to succeed in all feasible projects, in spite of everybody; and moreover, not to be understood as casting a slur on the Portuguese in Europe, the

sea must be maintained, and should we send no more cruisers to suppress the slave-trade, we would soon be obliged to send them to suppress piracy, for no traffic engenders lawlessness as does this odious trade. The plan I proposed required a steamer on Lake Nyassa to take up the ivory trade, as it is by the aid of that trade that the traffic in slaves is carried on. The government sent out a steamer which, though an excellent one, was too deep for the Shire. Another steamer was then built at my own expense; this was all that could be desired, made to unscrew into twenty-four pieces; and the Lady Nyassa, or Lady of the Lake, was actually unscrewed and ready for conveyance, at the foot of Murchison's Cataracts, when, the people being swept away in the manner I have mentioned, a work was hindered which I confidently believed would have entirely changed the state of the country. It was the steamer Lady of Nyassa that took me across the Indian Ocean, and in it I purpose to try again. Were I young again I would gladly devote my time to the missionary work; but that must be done by younger men, specially educated for it-men willing to rough it, and yet hold quietly and patiently on. When I became consul it was with the confident hope that I should

POETRY.

ON A DRIED WILD-FLOWER IN AN OLD That through these fringèd lids we see the soul

And the face from the bank looked laughing down So sauntered till-what met my eyes? At the face in the water there;

You glowworms shine out, and the pathway discover | Be quiet, and unclench your fist!