A few may have escaped, but the bones of those who died from torture mark out the long routes from the interior to the coast.
It is supposed that the agents of European origin, Portuguese for the most part, are only rascals whom their country has rejected, convicts, escaped prisoners, old slave-drivers whom the authorities have been unable to hang--in a word, the refuse of humanity.

Such was Negoro, such was Harris, now in the service of one of the greatest contractors of Central Africa, Jose-Antonio Alvez, well known by the traders of the province, about whom Lieutenant Cameron has given some curious information.
The soldiers who escort the captives are generally natives in the pay of the traders.

But the latter have not the monopoly of those raids which procure the slaves for them.

The negro kings also make atrocious wars with each other, and with the same object.

Then the vanquished adults, the women and children, reduced to slavery, are sold by the vanquishers for a few yards of calico, some powder, a few firearms, pink or red pearls, and often even, as Livingstone says, in periods of famine, for a few grains of maize.
The soldiers who escorted old Alvez's caravan might give a true idea of what African armies are.
It was an assemblage of negro bandits, hardly clothed, who brandished long flint-lock guns, the gun-barrels garnished with a great number of copper rings.