First,
there was the internal slave-trade between hostile native tribes. Then,
there were the slave-traders from the coast, Arabs, or half-caste
Portuguese, for whom natives were encouraged to collect slaves by all
the horrible means of marauding and murder. And further, there were the
parties sent out from Portuguese and Arab coast towns, with cloth and
beads, muskets and ammunition. The destructive and murderous effects of
the last were the climax of the system.
Dr. Livingstone had seen nothing to make him regard the African as of a
different species from the rest of the human family. Nor was he the
lowest of the species. He had a strong frame and a wonderfully
persistent vitality, was free from many European diseases, and could
withstand privations with wonderful light-heartedness.
He did not deem it necessary formally to answer a question sometimes
put, whether the African had enough of intellect to receive
Christianity. The reception of Christianity did not depend on intellect.
It depended, as Sir James Stephen had remarked, on a spiritual
intuition, which was not the fruit of intellectual culture.
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