Tipolo and his immediate friends treated me with every kindness; but many of the smaller traders, who would fain have been robbers and not traders at all, and who chafed under the restrictions which Tipolo enforced in their intercourse with the natives, did not regard me with any favour. They said openly it was a mistake to let an Englishman who knew all about their doings in Central Africa leave the country, as he would be sure to tell his government that they traded in slaves; and that already the _Beni har_ (sons of fire), as they called our naval officers, interfered with the transport of slaves from “the island” to Munculla and Muscat. To this Tipolo answered, that here among the heathen it was for all civilized persons to assist one another; that by all the laws of hospitality, by the traditions of the Arab race, and by the teaching of Mohammed, the prophet of God, whom God bless,[C] they were bound to assist me to the utmost, and should do so without any hope of reward or fear of evil.
Though Tipolo was so kind to me, I longed for the day when we should leave Nyangwe. In his presence I was free from insult, but many of the baser sort among the traders did not scruple to insult me, calling me a dog of a Nazarene, a hog, and unclean, and would doubtless, unless deterred by fear, have ill-treated me in other ways. These people too, I found, lived a life of debauchery. Such slaves as they had they treated in a very cruel manner, quite different from that in which Tipolo treated those of his household; but I am obliged to say that the captives he had made in his recent campaign, though fairly fed, were but poorly lodged, and kept chained in gangs of from ten to fifteen to prevent their escape.
One evening, as I was drinking coffee with him in his _barazah_, or veranda, the only other person present being Hatibu, to whom he had been giving orders about his journey to the coast, I ventured to speak to him about slavery and the condition of those unfortunate people dragged away from their wives and families.
I was somewhat afraid he would resent my interference, but I was much pleased to find that he did not. He only seemed to think that I and all Englishmen were mad on the question of slavery, which he argued had always been and always would be, adding that Daood, and Suliman ibu Daood (David and his son Solomon), and the prophet Ayoub (Job), had all possessed slaves, and that the Koran permitted slavery. To this I said that surely the Koran did not permit wars for the purpose of making slaves; and though I had never heard he had sent out slave-raids, still Muinyi Dugumbi and other traders did, and it could not be right to keep numbers of men in chains.