Note 6 — VIII THE SLAVE ROUTE TO THE COAST

I am not quite sure how this was discovered—whether an indiscreet friend “gave me away,” or whether an indiscreet letter was opened in the post, or the traders were simply guided by conjecture and a guilty conscience. At all events, one of the principal slave-dealers in Bihé discovered it, and took the pains to publish reports against me, that reached as far as Mossamedes. The English and American missions were actually warned to have nothing to do with me because I was a Jesuit in disguise, and had come to destroy their work! Further on I may have to refer to the plots to assassinate me on the coast during the voyage home, but I mention these little personal matters only to show that the slave-traders had been put on their guard and would naturally try to conceal as much as they could of their traffic’s horror, and that is the chief reason why I met no gangs of slaves in chains.