A silver gelatin print photograph of six Africans sitting and standing on a carpet watching the missionary and abolitionist Horace Waller (1833-96). It is not clear that Waller is counting money; he may instead be reading from an improving text or demonstrating some useful skill.

Waller joined the first Universities’ Mission to Central Africa and spent the early 1860s in Nyasaland, where he met David Livingstone (1813-73) and fought against the predations of Yao slave raiders. In 1870, he was elected to the committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.