Jules Verne (25 page)

Dick Sand, Austin, and Bat watched together. They tried to see, to
hear, during this very dark night, if any light whatsoever, or any
suspicious noise should strike their eyes or their ears. Nothing
troubled either the calm or the obscurity of the forest.

Torn, not sleepy, but absorbed in his remembrances, his head bent,
remained quiet, as if he had been struck by some sudden blow.

Mrs. Weldon rocked her child in her arms, and only thought of him.

Only Cousin Benedict slept, perhaps, for he alone did not suffer from
the common impression. His faculty for looking forward did not go so
far.

Suddenly, about eleven o'clock, a prolonged and grave roaring was
heard, with which was mingled a sort of sharper shuddering. Tom stood
up and stretched out his hand toward a dense thicket, a mile or more
distant.

Dick Sand seized his arm, but he could not prevent Tom from crying in a
loud voice: "The lion! the lion!"

This roaring, which he had so often heard in his infancy, the old black
had just recognized it.

"The lion!" he repeated.

Dick Sand, incapable of controlling himself longer, rushed, cutlass in
hand, to the place occupied by Harris.

Harris was no longer there, and his horse had disappeared with him.

A sort of revelation took place in Dick Sand's mind. He was not where
he had believed he was!

So it was not on the American coast that the "Pilgrim" had gone ashore!
It was not the Isle of Paques, whose bearing the novice had taken at
sea, but some other island situated exactly to the west of this
continent, as the Isle of Paques is situated to the west of America.

The compass had deceived him during a part of the voyage, we know why!
Led away by the tempest over a false route, he must have doubled Cape
Horn, and from the Pacific Ocean he had passed into the Atlantic! The
speed of his ship, which he could only imperfectly estimate, had been
doubled, unknown to him, by the force of the hurricane!

Behold why the caoutchouc trees, the quinquinas, the products of South
America were missing in this country, which was neither the plateau of
Atacama nor the Bolivian pampa!

Yes, they were giraffes, not ostriches, which had fled away in the
opening! They were elephants that had crossed the thick underwood! They
were hippopotami whose repose Dick Sand had troubled under the large
plants! It was the
tsetse
, that dipter picked up by Benedict, the
formidable
tsetse
under whose stings the animals of the caravans
perish!

Finally, it was, indeed, the roaring of the lion that had just sounded
through the forest! And those forks, those chains, that knife of
singular form, they were the tools of the slave-trader! Those mutilated
hands, they were the hands of captives!

The Portuguese Negoro, and the American Harris, must be in collusion!
And those terrible words guessed by Dick Sand, finally escaped his lips:

"Africa! Equatorial Africa! Africa of the slave-trade and the slaves!"

The slave trade! Nobody is ignorant of the significance of this
word, which should never have found a place in human language. This
abominable traffic, for a long time practised to the profit of the
European nations which possessed colonies beyond the sea, has been
already forbidden for many years. Meanwhile it is always going on
a large scale, and principally in Central Africa. Even in this
nineteenth century the signature of a few States, calling themselves
Christians, are still missing from the Act for the Abolition of
Slavery.

We might believe that the trade is no longer carried on; that this
buying and this selling of human creatures has ceased: it is not so,
and that is what the reader must know if he wishes to become more
deeply interested in the second part of this history. He must learn
what these men-hunts actually are still, these hunts which threaten
to depopulate a whole continent for the maintenance of a few slave
colonies; where and how these barbarous captures are executed; how
much blood they cost; how they provoke incendiarism and pillage;
finally, for whose profit they are made.

It is in the fifteenth century only that we see the trade in blacks
carried on for the first time. Behold under what circumstances it was
established:

The Mussulmans, after being expelled from Spain, took refuge beyond
the Strait on the coast of Africa. The Portuguese, who then occupied
that part of the coast, pursued them with fury. A certain number of
those fugitives were made prisoners and brought back to Portugal.
Reduced to slavery, they constituted the first nucleus of African
slaves which has been formed in Western Europe since the Christian
Era.

But those Mussulmans belonged, for the most part, to rich families,
who wished to buy them back for gold. The Portuguese refused to accept
a ransom, however large it might be. They had only to make foreign
gold. What they lacked were the arms so indispensable then for the
work of the growing colonies, and, to say it all, the arms of the
slave.

The Mussulman families, being unable to buy back their captive
relatives, then offered to exchange them for a much larger number of
black Africans, whom it was only too easy to carry off. The offer
was accepted by the Portuguese, who found that exchange to their
advantage, and thus the slave trade was founded in Europe.

Toward the end of the sixteenth century this odious traffic was
generally admitted, and it was not repugnant to the still barbarous
manners. All the States protected it so as to colonize more rapidly
and more surely the isles of the New World. In fact, the slaves of
black origin could resist the climate, where the badly acclimated
whites, still unfit to support the heat of intertropical climates,
would have perished by thousands. The transport of negroes to the
American colonies was then carried on regularly by special vessels,
and this branch of transatlantic commerce led to the creation of
important stations on different points of the African coast. The
"merchandise" cost little in the country of production, and the
returns were considerable.

But, necessary as was the foundation of the colonies beyond the sea
from all points of view, it could not justify those markets for human
flesh. Generous voices soon made themselves heard, which protested
against the trade in blacks, and demanded from the European
governments a decree of abolition in the name of the principles of
humanity.

In 1751, the Quakers put themselves at the head of the abolition
movement, even in the heart of that North America where, a hundred
years later, the War of Secession was to burst forth, to which this
question of slavery was not a foreign one. Different States in the
North—Virginia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania—decreed the
abolition of the slave trade, and freed the slaves brought to their
territories at great expense.

But the campaign commenced by the Quakers did not limit itself to the
northern provinces of the New World. Slaveholders were warmly attacked
beyond the Atlantic. France and England, more particularly, recruited
partisans for this just cause. "Let the colonies perish rather than a
principle!" Such was the generous command which resounded through all
the Old World, and, in spite of the great political and commercial
interests engaged in the question, it was effectively transmitted
through Europe.

The impetus was given. In 1807, England abolished the slave-trade
in her colonies, and France followed her example in 1814. The two
powerful nations exchanged a treaty on this subject—a treaty
confirmed by Napoleon during the Hundred Days.

However, that was as yet only a purely theoretical declaration. The
slave-ships did not cease to cross the seas, and to dispose of their
"ebony cargoes" in colonial ports.

More practical measures must be taken in order to put an end to this
commerce. The United States, in 1820, and England, in 1824, declared
the slave trade an act of piracy, and those who practised it pirates.
As such, they drew on themselves the penalty of death, and they were
pursued to the end. France soon adhered to the new treaty; but the
States of South America, and the Spanish and Portuguese colonies,
did not join in the Act of Abolition. The exportation of blacks
then continued to their profit, notwithstanding the right of search
generally recognized, which was limited to the verification of the
flag of suspicious vessels.

Meanwhile, the new Law of Abolition had not a retroactive effect. No
more new slaves were made, but the old ones had not yet recovered
their liberty.

It was under those circumstances that England set an example. In May,
1833, a general declaration emancipated all the blacks in the colonies
of Great Britain, and in August, 1838, six hundred and seventy
thousand slaves were declared free.

Ten years later, in 1848, the Republic emancipated the slaves of the
French colonies, say about two hundred and sixty thousand blacks. In
1861, the war which broke out between the Federals and Confederates,
of the United States, finishing the work of emancipation, extended it
to all North America.

The three great powers had then accomplished this work of humanity. At
the present hour, the trade is no longer carried on, except for the
benefit of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, and to satisfy the
wants of the populations of the Orient, Turks, or Arabs. Brazil, if
she has not yet restored her old slaves to liberty, at least no longer
receives new ones, and the children of the blacks are born free there.

It is in the interior of Africa, in the prosecution of those bloody
wars, waged by the African chiefs among themselves for this man-hunt,
that entire tribes are reduced to slavery. Two opposite directions are
then given to the caravans: one to the west, toward the Portuguese
colony of Angola; the other to the east, on the Mozambique. Of these
unfortunate beings, of whom only a small portion arrive at their
destination, some are exported, it may be to Cuba, it may be to
Madagascar; others to the Arab or Turkish provinces of Asia, to Mecca,
or to Muscat. The English and French cruisers can only prevent
this traffic to a small extent, as it is so difficult to obtain an
effective surveillance over such far-extended coasts.

But the figures of these odious exportations, are they still
considerable?

Yes! The number of slaves who arrive at the coast is estimated at
not less than eighty thousand; and this number, it appears, only
represents the tenth of natives massacred.

After these dreadful butcheries the devastated fields are deserted,
the burnt villages are without inhabitants, the rivers carry down dead
bodies, deer occupy the country. Livingstone, the day after one of
these men-hunts, no longer recognized the provinces he had visited
a few months before. All the other travelers—Grant, Speke, Burton,
Cameron, and Stanley—do not speak otherwise of this wooded plateau of
Central Africa, the principal theater of the wars between the chiefs.
In the region of the great lakes, over all that vast country which
feeds the market of Zanzibar, in Bornou and Fezzan, farther south,
on the banks of the Nyassa and the Zambesi, farther west, in the
districts of the upper Zaire, which the daring Stanley has just
crossed, is seen the same spectacle—ruins, massacres, depopulation.
Then will slavery in Africa only end with the disappearance of the
black race; and will it be with this race as it is with the Australian
race, or the race in New Holland?

But the market of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies will close some
day. That outlet will be wanting. Civilized nations can no longer
tolerate the slave trade!

Yes, without doubt; and this year even, 1878, ought to see the
enfranchisement of all the slaves still possessed by Christian States.
However, for long years to come the Mussulman nations will maintain
this traffic, which depopulates the African continent. It is for them,
in fact, that the most important emigration of the blacks is made, as
the number of natives snatched from their provinces and brought to
the eastern coast annually exceeds forty thousand. Long before the
expedition to Egypt the negroes of the Seunaar were sold by thousands
to the negroes of the Darfour, and reciprocally. General Bonaparte was
able to buy a pretty large number of these blacks, of whom he made
organized soldiers, like the Mamelukes. Since then, during this
century, of which four-fifths have now passed away, commerce in slaves
has not diminished in Africa. On the contrary.

And, in fact, Islamism is favorable to the slave trade. The black
slave must replace the white slave of former times, in Turkish
provinces. So contractors of every origin pursue this execrable
traffic on a large scale. They thus carry a supplement of population
to those races, which are dying out and will disappear some day,
because they do not regenerate themselves by labor. These slaves, as
in the time of Bonaparte, often become soldiers. With certain nations
of the upper Niger, they compose the half of the armies of the African
chiefs. Under these circumstances, their fate is not sensibly inferior
to that of free men. Besides, when the slave is not a soldier, he is
money which has circulation; even in Egypt and at Bornou, officers and
functionaries are paid in that money. William Lejean has seen it and
has told of it.

Such is, then, the actual state of the trade.

Must it be added that a number of agents of the great European powers
are not ashamed to show a deplorable indulgence for this commerce.
Nevertheless, nothing is truer; while the cruisers watch the coasts of
the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans, the traffic goes on regularly
in the interior, the caravans walk on under the eyes of certain
functionaries, and massacres, where ten blacks perish to furnish one
slave, take place at stated periods!