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, however great, constitutes but a small portion of the waste, and made us feel that unless the slave-trade--that monster iniquity, which has so long brooded over Africa--is put down, lawful commerce cannot be established.
We believed that, if it were possible to get a steamer upon the Lake, we could by her means put a check on the slavers from the East Coast; and aid more effectually still in the suppression of the slave-trade, by introducing, by way of the Rovuma, a lawful traffic in ivory.

We therefore unscrewed the "Lady Nyassa" at a rivulet about five hundred yards below the first cataract, and began to make a road over the thirty- five or forty miles of land portage, by which to carry her up piecemeal.
After mature consideration, we could not imagine a more noble work of benevolence, than thus to introduce light and liberty into a quarter of this fair earth, which human lust has converted into the nearest possible resemblance of what we conceive the infernal regions to be--and we sacrificed much of our private resources as an offering for the promotion of so good a cause.
The chief part of the labour of road-making consisted in cutting down trees and removing stones.

The country being covered with open forest, a small tree had to be cut about every fifty or sixty yards.