providential succor.

Alvez and a mongrel from Oujiji were talking a few steps from the hut
occupied by Mrs. Weldon. It is not astonishing that the slave-trade
was the subject of conversation between those worthy merchants.
The two _brokers_ in human flesh were talking business. They were
discussing the future of their commerce, and were worried about
the efforts the English were making to destroy it--not only on the
exterior, by cruisers, but in the interior, by their missionaries and
their travelers.

Jose-Antonio Alvez found that the explorations of these hardy pioneers
could only injure commercial operations. His interlocutor shared his
views, and thought that all these visitors, civil or religious, should
be received with gun-shots.

This had been done to some extent. But, to the great displeasure of
the traders, if they killed some of these curious ones, others escaped
them. Now, these latter, on returning to their country, recounted
"with exaggerations," Alvez said, the horrors of the slave-trade, and
that injured this commerce immensely--it being too much diminished
already.

The mongrel agreed to that, and deplored it; above all, concerning the
markets of N'yangwe, of Oujiji, of Zanzibar, and of all the great
lake regions. There had come successively Speke, Grant, Livingstone,
Stanley, and others. It was an invasion! Soon all England and all
America would occupy the country!

Alvez sincerely pitied his comrade, and he declared that the provinces
of Western Africa had been, till that time, less badly treated--that
is to say, less visited; but the epidemic of travelers was beginning
to spread. If Kazounde had been spared, it was not so with Cassange,
and with Bihe, where Alvez owned factories. It may be remembered,
also, that Harris had spoken to Negoro of a certain Lieutenant
Cameron, who might, indeed, have the presumption to cross Africa from
one side to the other, and after entering it by Zanzibar, leave it by
Angola.

In fact, the trader had reason to fear, and we know that, some years
after, Cameron to the south and Stanley to the north, were going
to explore these little-known provinces of the west, describe the
permanent monstrosities of the trade, unveil the guilty complicities
of foreign agents, and make the responsibility fall on the right
parties.

Neither Alvez nor the mongrel could know anything yet of this
exploration of Cameron's and of Stanley's; but what they did know,
what they said,