Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

FOR
CHAPTER III
Far, yet not Farthest, in
J Jy^HEREIN the reader is invited to
call a spade a spade^ and return
a true bill against Portuguese slavery y the
black ivory being proved to carry the
white ivory out to the Atlantic,
here, in this trail debouching on the seashore
from the Catumbella Hills, you have the most
famous slave track in Africa— yes! And all
persistently passing under the nose of high constituted
authority, remember. His Excellency the Governor is
there in Benguella, while beyond that dignitary, away
far out at sea, an occasional curl of blue smoke indicates a
passing British cruiser. The port-holes look exactly like
the clenched teeth of a bull-dog longing to bite the
Portuguese slaver. Yet the confusion and degradation of
thought is such that for more than a century there has
been a tacit conspiracy to wink at it all. But the God
Who has cursed the man who winketh with the eye is not
indeed mocked, and '* Cursed Catumbella " is the awful
alliteration of this sad story. For if inter-negro slavery
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