terfere--a proceeding which, had we
attempted it, would simply have meant murder for ourselves and slavery
for them. Next day from a hill-top we saw the slave encampment far
below, and the ghastly procession marshaling for its march to the
distant coast, which many of the hundreds who composed it would never
reach alive.

Talking of native foot-paths leads me to turn aside for a moment, to
explain to the uninitiated the true mode of African travel. In spite
of all the books that have been lavished upon us by our great
explorers, few people seem to have any accurate understanding of this
most simple process. Some have the impression that everything is done
in bullock wagons; an idea borrowed from the Cape, but hopelessly
inapplicable to Central Africa, where a wheel at present would be as
great a novelty as a polar bear. Others, at the opposite extreme,
suppose that the explorer works along solely by compass, making a
bee-line for his destination, and steering his caravan through the
trackless wilderness like a ship at sea. Now, it may be a surprise to
the unenlightened to learn that probably no explorer in forcing his
passage through Africa has ever, for more than a few days at a time,
been off some beaten track. Probably no country in the world,
civilized or uncivilized, is better supplied with paths than this
unmapped continent. Every village is connected with some other
village, every tribe with the next tribe, every State with its
neighbor, and therefore with all the rest. The explorer's business is
simply to select from this network of tracks, keep a general
direction, and hold on his way. Let him begin at Zanzibar, plant his
foot on a native foot-path, and set his face towards Tanganyika. In
eight months he will be there. He has simply to persevere. From
village to village he will be handed on, zig-zagging it may be,
sometimes, to avoid the impassable barriers of nature or the rarer
perils of hostile tribes; but never taking to the woods, never guided
solely by the stars, never in fact leaving a beaten track, till
hundreds and hundreds of miles are between him and the sea, and his
interminable foot-path ends with a canoe on the shores of Tanganyika.
Crossing the lake, landing near some native village, he picks up the
thread once more. Again he plods on and on, now on foot, now by canoe,
but always keeping his line of villages, until one day suddenly he
sniffs the sea-breeze again, and his faithful foot-wide guide