Engraving accompanies Chapter XVIII of Livingstone's travel narratives; it portrays an incident that he witnessed in the village of his friend Mbame. As Livingstone explained, " . . . [a] slave party, a long line of manacled men, women, and children, came wending their way round the hill and into the valley, on the side which the village stood. The black drivers, armed with muskets, and bedecked with various articles of finery, marched jauntily in the front, middle, and rear of the line; some of them blowing exultant notes out of long tin horns." (p. 356) Livingstone noted, however, that the black drivers fled as soon as they saw him and his fellow Englishmen. Livingstone and his party thus freed the captives (who were most likely Manganja). "It was more difficult to cut the men adrift," he wrote, "as each had his neck in the fork of a stout stick, six or seven feet long, and kept in by an iron rod, which was riveted at both end across the throat. With a saw, . . . one by one the men were sawn out into freedom." (p. 356-57), Plate in David Livingstone's Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi and its Tributaries: and of the Discovery of the Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa, 1858-1864 (London: John Murray, 1865), p. 356., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Scenes from the Slave Trade.
Creator
Whymper, Josiah Wood, 1813-1903, engraver
Date
[1865]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare U Afri Livin 16307.O p 356, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2925