g carried by the slaves, that the latter do not eat up all the
profits of a trip. An influence would be exerted over an enormous area
of country, for the Mazitu about the north end of the Lake will not allow
slave-traders to pass round that way through their country. They would
be most efficient allies to the English, and might themselves be
benefited by more intercourse. As things are now, the native traders in
ivory and malachite have to submit to heavy exactions; and if we could
give them the same prices which they at present get after carrying their
merchandise 300 miles beyond this to the Coast, it might induce them to
return without going further. It is only by cutting off the supplies in
the interior, that we can crush the slave-trade on the Coast. The plan
proposed would stop the slave-trade from the Zambesi on one side and
Kilwa on the other; and would leave, beyond this tract, only the
Portuguese port of Inhambane on the south, and a portion of the Sultan of
Zanzibar's dominion on the north, for our cruisers to look after. The
Lake people grow abundance of cotton for their own consumption, and can
sell it for a penny a pound or even less. Water-carriage exists by the
Shire and Zambesi all the way to England, with the single exception of a
portage of about thirty-five miles past the Murchison Cataracts, along
which a road of less than forty miles could be made at a trifling
expense; and it seems feasible that a legitimate and thriving trade
might, in a short time, take the place of the present unlawful traffic.

Colonel Rigby, Captains Wilson, Oldfield, and Chapman, and all the most
intelligent officers on the Coast, were unanimous in the belief, that one
small vessel on the Lake would have decidedly more influence, and do more
good in suppressing the slave-trade, than half a dozen men-of-war on the
ocean. By judicious operations, therefore, on a small scale inland,
little expense would be incurred, and the English slave-trade policy on
the East would have the same fair chance of success, as on the West
Coast.

After a land-journey of forty days, we returned to the ship on the 6th of
October, 1859, in a somewhat exhausted condition, arising more from a
sort of poisoning, than from the usual fatigue of travel. We had taken a
little mulligatawney paste, for making soup, in case of want of time to
cook other food. Late one afternoon, at the end of an unusually long
march, we reached Mikena, near the base