Dhow Chasing in Zanzibar Waters - The Search For Mecca

INTRODUCTION. 5
known at tliat time of the slave-trade as it then
existed, and how small tlie means were for
suppressing it ; and subsequently and recently,
when, in command of H.M. ships the " Pantaloon"
and "Daphne," I was enabled to judge
of the vast increase of the trade during the
interval, and when, in the years 1868 and
1869, I was fortunate enough, with other commanders,
to assist in liberating no less than
2179 negroes.
Among the great difficulties which officers
meet with in
the execution of this duty at first,
is the want of personal experience and the
absence of any document or record of the experience
of others who have preceded them; and it
is partly to meet this want, so much dwelt on
in the evidence given before a Select Committee
of the House of Commons, that I have been
induced thus to record my own experience ; in
doing which I have, in the first
place, confined
myself as much as possible to a simple narrative
of facts, subsequently dwelling more fully on
the slave-trade as it now exists on that coast,
and especially on that part of it claimed by the