ged not to interfere!

Since the above was written Sir Bartle Frere has returned from his
mission, and we are told that a treaty has been signed by the Sultan of
Zanzibar putting an end to this domestic slavery. We have not yet seen
the terms of this treaty, and must go to press before it appears. We
have reason to rejoice and be thankful, however, that such an advantage
has been gained. But let not the reader imagine that this settles the
question of East African slavery. Portugal still holds to the "domestic
institution" in her colonies, and has decreed that it shall not expire
till the year 1878. Decreed, in fact, that the horrors which we have
attempted to depict shall continue for five years longer! And let it be
noted, that the export slave-trade cannot be stopped as long as domestic
slavery is permitted. Besides this, there is a continual drain of human
beings from Africa through Egypt. Sir Samuel Baker's mission is a blow
aimed at that; but nothing, that we know of, is being done in regard to
Portuguese wickedness. If the people of this country could only realise
the frightful state of things that exists in the African Portuguese
territory, and knew how many thousand bodies shall be racked with
torture, and souls be launched into eternity during these five years,
they would indignantly insist that Portugal should be _compelled_ to
stop it _at once_. If it is righteous to constrain the Sultan of
Zanzibar, is it not equally so to compel the King of Portugal?

The arch robber and murderer, Yoosoof--smooth and oily of face, tongue,
and manner though he was--possessed a bold spirit and a grasping heart.
The domestic institution did not suit him. Rather than sneak along his
villainous course under its protecting "pass," he resolved to bid
defiance to laws, treaties, and men-of-war to boot--as many hundreds of
his compeers have done and do--and make a bold dash to the north with
his eight hundred specimens of Black Ivory.

Accordingly, full of his purpose, one afternoon he sauntered up to the
barracoons in which his "cattle" were being rested and fed-up.

Moosa, his chief driver, was busy among them with the lash, for, like
other cattle, they had a tendency to rebel, at least a few of them had;
the most of them were by that time reduced to the callous condition
which had struck Harold and Disco so much on the occasion of their
visits to the slave-market of Zanzibar.

Moosa was engaged, when Yoosoof enter