ABSTRACT

IT will be recalled that even so intelligent an officer as Captain Colomb had no previous knowledge of the East African Slave Trade except what he had gleaned from the books of the explorers which he happened to read. It was the work of these men, not only to open up that part of the interior of the continent, but to draw the attention of their countrymen to what Livingstone called “the open sore” of Africa. Before they published the narratives of their journeys the public at home was almost totally ignorant of the prevailing conditions, because it had for so long been accustomed to regarding the Slave Trade as an affair limited to the Atlantic. Now it was informed by one explorer after another that no attempt could be made to promote trade, or preach the Gospel in Africa, until the Arab trade was abolished.