Dhow Chasing in Zanzibar Waters - The Search For Mecca

APPENDIX. 329
provisions of our treaties with all tliose cliiefs,
declaring the slave-trade piracy, would be rigidly
enforced, and that the commander of every
dhow found with slaves on board would be
hanged."
576. " Nothing having been done to carry that
out for a good many years, do you think it
would still have the same effect ?" — " We might
well say to the Sultan we have left it to
you to
act up to the treaties, and to abolish this
horrible man-stealing ;
you have not done it, we
do not say you are wilfully and knowingly keeping
up this slave-trade, but it
has been, chiefly
through the instrumentality of the English
Government, suppressed in every other country
in the world, and we will no longer allow you
Arabs to be an exception."
576. "We have no treaties with them which
prohibit man-stealing altogether?"— "No, but
we should simply say we will not allow this ; I
think the Arabs quite understand that way of
putting it. I often said to the Sultan, You
Arabs come down here because you find
a very
pleasant and fertile country preferable to your
own barren deserts, but that does not give you
any right to depopulate half Africa, and to go
and steal the population and sell them."
577. "You consider we should be justified in
interfering with a strong arm in the interior of