CHAPTER THREE. 

RELATES THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF HAROLD AND DISCO, AND LIFTS THE CURTAIN A LITTLE HIGHER IN REGARD TO THE SLAVE-TRADE. 

So Captain Romer and his lieutenants went to dine with the worthy Governor Senhor Francisco Alfonso Toledo Bignoso Letotti, while Yoosoof returned to the creek to carry out his deep-laid plans. 

In regard to the dinner, let it suffice to observe that it was good, and that the Governor was urbane, hospitable, communicative, and every way agreeable. It is probable that if he had been trained in another sphere and in different circumstances he might have been a better man. As things stood, he was unquestionably a pleasant one, and Captain Romer found it hard to believe that he was an underhand schemer. 

Nothing could exceed the open way in which Senhor Letotti condemned the slave-trade, praised the English for their zeal in attempting to suppress it, explained that the King of Portugal and the Sultan of Zanzibar were equally anxious for its total extinction, and assured his guests that he would do everything that lay in his power to further their efforts to capture the guilty kidnappers, and to free the poor slaves! 

"But, my dear sir," said he, at the conclusion of an emphatic declaration of sympathy, "the thing is exceedingly difficult. You are aware that Arab traders swarm upon the coast, that they are reckless men, who possess boats and money in abundance, that the trade is very profitable, and that, being to some extent real traders in ivory, palm-oil, indigo, and other kinds of native produce, these men have many _ruses_ and methods--what you English call dodges--whereby they can deceive even the most sharp-sighted and energetic. The Arabs are smart smugglers of negroes--very much as your people who live in the Scottish land are smart smugglers of the dew of the mountain--what your great poet Burns speaks much of--I forget its name--it is not easy to put them down." 
Who else wanted to stop the slave trade?
 the English