“When Syed, an old friend of mine, crossed Lualaba, he heard I was in the village, where a company of slave traders were furiously assaulted for three days by justly incensed Bobemba. I would not fight nor allow my people to fire if I saw them, because Bobemba had been especially kind to me. Syed sent a party of his own people to invite me to leave the village and come to him. He showed himself the opposite of hard-hearted; but slavery hardens within, petrifies the feelings, is bad for the victims and ill for the victimizers. Once, it is said, a party of twelve, who had been slaves in their own country--Cunda or Conda, of which Cazemba is chief or general--were loaded with large, heavy yokes, which were forked trees, about three inches in diameter and seven or eight feet long, the neck inserted in the fork and an iron bar driven across one end of the fork to the other and riveted to the other end, tied at night to the tree or ceiling of the hut, and the neck being firm in the fork and the slave held off from unloosing it, was excessively troublesome to the wearer, and, when marching, two yokes were tied together by tree ends and loads put on the slaves’ heads beside.
“A woman, having an additional yoke and load, and a child on her back, said to me on passing, ‘They are killing me. If they would take off the yoke I could manage the load and child; but I shall die with three loads.’ The one who spoke this did die; poor little girl! Her child perished of starvation.
“I interceded some, but when unyoked off they bounded into the long grass, and I was greatly blamed for not caring in presence of the owners of the property.
“After the day’s march under a broiling, vertical sun, with yokes and heavy loads, the strongest were exhausted. The party of twelve, above mentioned, were sitting down singing and laughing. ‘Hallo, said I, ‘these fellows take to it kindly. This must be the class for whom philosophers say slavery is the natural state;’ and I went and asked the cause of their mirth.
“I had asked aid of their owner as to the meaning of the word ‘Rukha,’ which usually means fly or leap. They were using it to express the idea of haunting, as a ghost, inflicting disease or death, and the song was: ‘Yes, we going away to Manga, abroad, or white man’s land, with yoke on our necks; but we shall have no yokes in death, and shall return and haunt and kill you.’ Chorus then struck in, which was the name of the man who had sold each of them, and then followed the general laugh, in which at first I saw no bitterness. Tarembee, an old man, at least one hundred and four years, being one of the sellers, in accordance with African belief, they had no doubt of being soon able, by ghost power, to kill even him.
