Explore "Tropical Africa" by Henry Drummond on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
ITS PATHOLOGY AND CURE.
The life of the native African is not all idyll. It is darkened by a tragedy whose terrors are unknown to any other people under heaven. Of its mild domestic slavery I do not speak, nor of its revolting witchcraft, nor of its endless quarrels and frequent tribal wars. These minor evils are lost in the shadow of a great and national wrong. Among these simple and unprotected tribes, Arabs -- uninvited strangers of another race and nature -- pour in from the North and East, with the deliberate purpose of making this paradise a hell. It seems the awful destiny of this homeless people to spend their lives in breaking up the homes of others. Wherever they go in Africa the followers of Islam are the destroyers of peace, the breakers up of the patriarchal life, the dissolvers of the family tie. Already they hold the whole Continent under one reign of terror. They have effected this in virtue of one thing -- they possess firearms; and they do it for one object -- ivory and slaves, for these two are one. The slaves are needed to buy ivory with; then more slaves have to be stolen to carry it. So living man himself has become the commercial currency of Africa. He is locomotive, he is easily acquired, he is immediately negotiable.