Livingstone summed up his impressions in one
terrible sentence:
"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.
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