Describes Some of the Doings of Yoosoof and His Men in Procuring Black Ivory from the Interior of Africa.

A dirty shop, in a filthy street in the unhealthy town of Zanzibar, is the point to which we now beg leave to conduct our reader—whom we also request to leap, in a free and easy way, over a few months of time!

It is not for the sake of the shop that we make this leap, but for the purpose of introducing the two men who, at the time we write of, sat over their grog in a small back-room connected with that shop. Still the shop itself is not altogether unworthy of notice. It is what the Americans call a store—a place where you can purchase almost every article that the wants of man have called into being. The prevailing smells are of oil, sugar, tea, molasses, paint, and tar, a compound which confuses the discriminating powers of the nose, and, on the principle that extremes meet, removes the feeling of surprise that ought to be aroused by discovering that these odours are in close connexion with haberdashery and hardware. There are enormous casks, puncheons, and kegs on the floor; bales on the shelves; indescribable confusion in the corners; preserved meat tins piled to the ceiling; with dust and dirt encrusting everything. The walls, beams, and rafters, appear to be held together by means of innumerable cobwebs. Hosts of flies fatten on, without diminishing, the stock, and squadrons of cockroaches career over the earthen floor.

In the little back-room of this shop sat the slave-dealer Yoosoof, in company with the captain of an English ship which lay in the harbour.

Smoke from the captain’s pipe filled the little den to such an extent that Yoosoof and his friend were not so clearly distinguishable as might have been desired.

“You’re all a set of false-hearted, wrong-headed, low-minded, scoundrels,” said the plain-spoken captain, accompanying each asseveration with a puff so violent as to suggest the idea that his remarks were round-shot and his mouth a cannon.

The Briton was evidently not in a complimentary mood. It was equally evident that Yoosoof was not in a touchy vein, for he smiled the slightest possible smile and shrugged his shoulders. He had business to transact with the captain which was likely to result very much to his advantage, and Yoosoof was not the man to let feelings stand in the way of business.

“Moreover,” pursued the captain, in a gruff voice, “the trade in slaves is illegally conducted in one sense, namely, that it is largely carried on by British subjects.”

“How you make that out?” asked Yoosoof.

“How? why, easy enough. Aren’t the richest men in Zanzibar the Banyans, and don’t these Banyans, who number about 17,000 of your population, supply you Arabs with money to carry on the accursed slave-trade? And ain’t these Banyans Indian merchants—subjects of Great Britain?”

Yoosoof shrugged his shoulders again and smiled.

“And don’t these opulent rascals,” continued the Briton, “love their ease as well as their money, and when they want to increase the latter without destroying the former, don’t they make advances to the like of you and get 100 per cent out of you for every dollar advanced?”

Yoosoof nodded his head decidedly at this, and smiled again.

“Well, then, ain’t the whole lot of you a set of mean scoundrels?” said the captain fiercely.

Yoosoof did not smile at this; he even looked for a moment as if he were going to resent it, but it was only for a moment. Self-interest came opportunely to his aid, and made him submissive.

“What can we do?” he asked after a short silence. “You knows what the Sultan say, other day, to one British officer, ‘If you stop slave-trade you will ruin Zanzibar.’ We mus’ not do that. Zanzibar mus’ not be ruin.”

“Why not?” demanded the captain, with a look of supreme contempt, “what if Zanzibar was ruined? Look here, now, Yoosoof, your dirty little island—the whole island observe—is not quite the size of my own Scotch county of Lanark. Its population is short of 250,000 all told—scarce equal to the half of the population of Lanark—composed of semi-barbarians and savages. That’s one side of the question. Here’s the other side: Africa is one of the four quarters of the earth, with millions of vigorous niggers and millions of acres of splendid land, and no end of undeveloped resources, and you have the impudence to tell me that an enormous lump of this land must be converted into a desert, and something like 150,000 of its best natives be drawn off annually—for what?—for what?” repeated the sailor, bringing his fist down on the table before him with such force that the glasses danced on it and the dust flew up; “for what? I say; for a paltry, pitiful island, ruled by a sham sultan, without army or navy, and with little money, save what he gets by slave-dealing; an island which has no influence for good on the world, morally, religiously, or socially, and with little commercially, though it has much influence for evil; an island which has helped the Portuguese to lock up the east coast of Africa for centuries; an island which would not be missed—save as a removed curse—if it were sunk this night to the bottom of the sea, and all its selfish, sensual, slave-dealing population swept entirely off the face of the earth.”

The captain had risen and dashed his pipe to atoms on the floor in his indignation as he made these observations. He now made an effort to control himself, and then, sitting down, he continued— “Just think, Yoosoof; you’re a sharp man of business, as I know to my cost. You can understand a thing in a commercial point of view. Just try to look at it thus: On the one side of the world’s account you have Zanzibar sunk with all its Banyan and Arab population; we won’t sink the niggers, poor wretches. We’ll suppose them saved, along with the consuls, missionaries, and such-like. Well, that’s a loss of somewhere about 83,000 scoundrels,—a gain we might call it, but for the sake of argument we’ll call it a loss. On the other side of the account you have 30,000 niggers—fair average specimens of humanity—saved from slavery, besides something like 150,000 more saved from death by war and starvation, the results of the slave-trade; 83,000 from 150,000 leaves 67,000! The loss, you see, would be more than wiped off, and a handsome balance left at the world’s credit the very first year! To say nothing of the opening up of legitimate commerce to one of the richest countries on earth, and the consequent introduction of Christianity.”

The captain paused to take breath. Yoosoof shrugged his shoulders, and a brief silence ensued, which was happily broken, not by a recurrence to the question of slavery, but by the entrance of a slave. He came in search of Yoosoof for the purpose of telling him that his master wished to speak with him. As the slave’s master was one of the wealthy Banyans just referred to, Yoosoof rose at once, and, apologising to the captain for quitting him so hurriedly, left that worthy son of Neptune to cool his indignation in solitude.

Passing through several dirty streets the slave led the slaver to a better sort of house in a more salubrious or, rather, less pestilential, part of the town. He was ushered into the presence of an elderly man of quiet, unobtrusive aspect.

“Yoosoof,” said the Banyan in Arabic, “I have been considering the matter about which we had some conversation yesterday, and I find that it will be convenient for me to make a small venture. I can let you have three thousand dollars.”

“On the old terms?” asked Yoosoof.

“On the old terms,” replied the merchant. “Will you be ready to start soon?”

Yoosoof said that he would, that he had already completed the greater part of his preparations, and that he hoped to start for the interior in a week or two.

“That is well; I hope you may succeed in doing a good deal of business,” said the merchant with an amiable nod and smile, which might have led an ignorant onlooker to imagine that Yoosoof’s business in the interior was work of a purely philanthropic nature!

“There is another affair, which, it has struck me, may lie in your way,” continued the merchant. “The British consul is, I am told, anxious to find some one who will undertake to make inquiries in the interior about some Englishmen, who are said to have been captured by the black fellows and made slaves of.”

“Does the consul know what tribe has captured them?” asked Yoosoof.

“I think not; but as he offers five hundred dollars for every lost white man who shall be recovered and brought to the coast alive, I thought that you might wish to aid him!”

“True,” said Yoosoof, musing, “true, I will go and see him.”

Accordingly, the slave-dealer had an interview with the consul, during which he learned that there was no absolute certainty of any Englishmen having been captured. It was only a vague rumour; nevertheless it was sufficiently probable to warrant the offer of five hundred dollars to any one who should effect a rescue; therefore Yoosoof, having occasion to travel into the interior at any rate, undertook to make inquiries.

He was also told that two Englishmen had, not long before, purchased an outfit, and started off with the intention of proceeding to the interior by way of the Zambesi river, and they, the consul said, might possibly be heard of by him near the regions to which he was bound; but these, he suggested, could not be the men who were reported as missing.

Of course Yoosoof had not the most remote idea that these were the very Englishmen whom he himself had captured on the coast, for, after parting from them abruptly, as described in a former chapter, he had ceased to care or think about them, and besides, was ignorant of the fact that they had been to Zanzibar.

Yoosoof’s own particular business required a rather imposing outfit. First of all, he purchased and packed about 600 pounds worth of beads of many colours, cloth of different kinds, thick brass wire, and a variety of cheap trinkets, such as black men and women are fond of, for Yoosoof was an “honest” trader, and paid his way when he found it suitable to do so. He likewise hired a hundred men, whom he armed with guns, powder, and ball, for Yoosoof was also a dishonest trader, and fought his way when that course seemed most desirable.

With this imposing caravan he embarked in a large dhow, sailed for the coast landed at Kilwa, and proceeded into the interior of Africa.

It was a long and toilsome journey over several hundred miles of exceedingly fertile and beautiful country, eminently suited for the happy abode of natives. But Yoosoof and his class who traded in black ivory had depopulated it to such an extent that scarce a human being was to be seen all the way. There were plenty of villages, but they were in ruins, and acres of cultivated ground with the weeds growing rank where the grain had once flourished. Further on in the journey, near the end of it, there was a change; the weeds and grain grew together and did battle, but in most places the weeds gained th............