d had been left behind; and famine and starvation had cut
off so many, that the remainder were too few to bury the dead. The
corpses we saw floating down the river were only a remnant of those that
had perished, whom their friends, from weakness, could not bury, nor over-
gorged crocodiles devour. It is true that famine caused a great portion
of this waste of human life: but the slave-trade must be deemed the chief
agent in the ruin, because, as we were informed, in former droughts all
the people flocked from the hills down to the marshes, which are capable
of yielding crops of maize in less than three months, at any time of the
year, and now they were afraid to do so. A few, encouraged by the
Mission in the attempt to cultivate, had their little patches robbed as
successive swarms of fugitives came from the hills. Who can blame these
outcasts from house and home for stealing to save their wretched lives,
or wonder that the owners protected the little all, on which their own
lives depended, with club and spear? We were informed by Mr. Waller of
the dreadful blight which had befallen the once smiling Shire Valley. His
words, though strong, failed to impress us with the reality. In fact,
they were received, as some may accept our own, as tinged with
exaggeration; but when our eyes beheld the last mere driblets of this cup
of woe, we for the first time felt that the enormous wrongs inflicted on
our fellow-men by slaving are beyond exaggeration.

Wherever we took a walk, human skeletons were seen in every direction,
and it was painfully interesting to observe the different postures in
which the poor wretches had breathed their last. A whole heap had been
thrown down a slope behind a village, where the fugitives often crossed
the river from the east; and in one hut of the same village no fewer than
twenty drums had been collected, probably the ferryman's fees. Many had
ended their misery under shady trees--others under projecting crags in
the hills--while others lay in their huts, with closed doors, which when
opened disclosed the mouldering corpse with the poor rags round the
loins--the skull fallen off the pillow--the little skeleton of the child,
that had perished first, rolled up in a mat between two large skeletons.
The sight of this desert, but eighteen months ago a well peopled valley,
now literally strewn with human bones, forced the conviction upon us,
that the destruction of human life in the middle passage,