At times his record of what he saw of the slave trade is given in gruesome detail.

In his field diary Livingstone writes: “This is the slave route…It is astonishing to see the numbers of taming sticks lying on the side of the path, taken off when the poor victim became hopeless of escape...

“Here is the spectacle of a woman tied by her neck to a tree and dead; [another] slave tied to a tree, dead and putrid, and partly eaten by the hyenas. Yet another slave had his or her head hanging on one side, but the cord still held the [dead] body upright…

“We assert the guiltiness of those who sell, as well as those who buy slaves, who in great part are destroyed before they reach their destination.”

Dr Adrian Wisnicki, Director of Livingstone Online, Assistant Professor

62 August 2015

“Tis is the slave route…It is astonishing to see the numbers of taming sticks lying on the side of the path, taken off when the poor victim became hopeless of escape.”

:David Livingstone Livingstone’s field drawings

at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and an honorary research Fellow at the University of Glasgow, says: “It is heart- breaking to read Livingstone’s eye-witness accounts and to see his simple, stark images of brutality and death.”

In his determination to reveal the true horror of the East African slave trade, the explorer became the 19th century equivalent of a modern war reporter.

Undaunted by the intense heat and humidity, by the stench of roting corpses, and by the ever-present threat of atack in