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Indeed, worse than that since the governors of their Transatlantic possessions even the captains of their ships of war have been known, not only to connive at the slave-traffic, but actually to assist in carrying it on! Had it been a ship of one of these nations the Pandora would have been less desirous of escaping from her.
Dates are not only the principal growth of the Fezzan oases, but the main subsistence of their inhabitants. All live on dates; men, women and children, horses, asses and camels, and sheep, fowls and dogs. Mr. Gagliuffi gives the following statistics of the slave-traffic viâ Mourzuk from Bornou and Soudan: In 1843 2,200 In 1844 1,200 In 1845 1,100 Total, 4,500
Lev. xxv. 44-46 directs the Hebrews to buy bondmen and bondwomen of the nations around them, "and ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession," thus sanctioning the slave-traffic. Leviticus xxvii. 29 distinctly commands human sacrifice, forbidding the redemption of any that are "devoted of men."
Whilst we condemn their slave-traffic as we condemn our own, we must do justice to the efforts which they have made, by the spread of their creed and the diffusion of their commerce, during a series of ten or twelve centuries, for promoting the civilization of Africa. They have succeeded, they have done infinitely more for Africa than we ourselves.
In deserts and mountains we find always the free-men: in soft and luxurious countries we find the slaves. It is not the free-born Touarick who is the slave-dealer, or the stimulator of the slave-traffic, but the Moorish merchant, and the voluptuary on the coast who sends him.
A constant carousal, therefore, was kept up, and drinking, singing, dancing, and "skylarking" were practised from morning to night. You may be surprised to know that a ship so evidently fitted out for slave-traffic could have thus openly and directly sailed out of a British port.
When they die nothing is found in their houses, nor gold, silver, money, or goods, not even victuals. God punishes them thus because they are a nation of Jews and slave-dealers." Belazee forgets that his government is partly supported by the slave-traffic.
Add to this the fact that the slaves were packed so tightly together that it was impossible to move, and thus obtain the relief of even a slight change of position; bear in mind that it was equally impossible to cleanse the slave-deck during the entire period of the passage of the ship from port to port; think of the indescribable foulness of the place, the dreadful atmosphere generated by the ever-accumulating filth, and the exhalations from the bodies of four or five hundred human beings wedged together in this confined space; and add to all this the horrors of sea-sickness, and it at once becomes a perfect marvel that a sufficient number remained alive at the end of the passage to render the slave-traffic a remunerative business.
During the road from Sockna to Bonjem, I thought of two or three regulations which might mitigate the evils of Saharan slave-traffic, as well as limit its operations, if our Government could prevail upon the Turks to adopt them. If we can't stop the trade at once, we may try to lessen its miseries. We English did the same in the case of our own slave-trade. 1st.
Almost better would it have been to remain in the desert alone, and risk the pursuit of that awful man, than to come all this way to find the world gone wrong. The old lady was horrified, too. She had heard more than the girl of licensed evil; but she had read it in the paper as she had read about the evils of the slave-traffic in Africa, and it had never really seemed true to her.
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