Well, he saw their policy, and regretted that
they should be allowed to follow us into perfectly new
regions. The regret was the more poignant, inasmuch as but
for our entering in by gentleness, they durst not have gone.
No Portuguese dared, for instance, to come up this Shire
Valley; but after our dispelling the fear of the natives by
fair treatment, they came in calling themselves our
'children.' The whole thing culminated when this quarter was
inundated with Tette slavers, whose operations, with a
marauding tribe of Ajawas, and a drought, completely
depopulated the country. The sight of this made me conclude
that unless something could be done to prevent these raids,
and take off their foolish obstructions on the rivers, which
they never use, our work in this region was at an end....
Please the Supreme, I shall work some other point yet. In
leaving, it is bitter to see some 900 miles of coast
abandoned to those who were the first to begin the
slave-trade, and seem determined to be the last to abandon
it.
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