During these months we had great difficulty in separating, arranging, and organising the enormous numbers of people — male and female — who considered themselves our slaves, and who, since the Arabs had been driven out, were like sheep without a shepherd.

Thousands of Arab slaves, and native freemen and slaves with their herds of women, were daily coming to ask what they were to do. We selected the petty chiefs who still existed (and in cases where the chiefs had been killed, made new ones), and these, in turn, selected their own people; one of us then marched this party out into the surrounding country, and, choosing a convenient place for them, gave orders that they should build a village and start planting. We supplied these colonies with maize, rice, and other seeds; and so successful was this