The sources of supply for the slave-market are various, but the chief is direct from Guinea and the Sáhara, where the raids of the traders are too well understood to need description. Usually some inter-tribal jealousy is fostered and fanned into a flame, and the one which loses is plundered of men and goods. Able-bodied lads and young girls are in most demand, and fetch high prices when brought to the north. The unfortunate prisoners are marched with great hardship and privation to depôts over the Atlas, where they pick up Arabic and are initiated into Mohammedanism. To a missionary who once asked one of the dealers how they found their way across the desert, the terribly significant reply was, "There are many bones along the way!" After a while the survivors are either exposed for sale in the markets of Marrákesh or Fez, or hawked round from door to door in the coast towns, where public auctions are prohibited. Some have even found their way to Egypt and Constantinople, having been transported in British vessels, and landed at Gibraltar as members of the dealer's family!
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Another source of supply is the constant series of quarrels between the tribes of Morocco itself, during which many children are carried off who are white or nearly so. In this case the victims are almost all girls, for whom good prices are to be obtained. This opens a door for illegal supplies, children born of slaves and others kidnapped being thus disposed of for hareems. For this purpose the demand for white girls is much in excess of that for black, so that great temptation is offered. I knew a man who had seventeen such in his house, and of nearly a dozen whom I saw there, none were too dark to have passed for English brunettes.
Though nothing whatever can be said in defence of this practice of tearing our fellow-men from their homes, and selling them as slaves, our natural feelings of horror abate considerably when we become acquainted with its results under the rule of Islám. Instead of the fearful state of things which occurred under English or American rule, it is a pleasure to find that, whatever may be the shortcomings of the Moors, in this case, at any rate, they have set us a good example. Even their barbarous treatment of Christian slaves till within a century was certainly no worse than our treatment of black slaves.
To begin with, Mohammedans make no distinction in civil or religious rights between a black skin and a white. So long as a man avows belief in no god but God, and in Mohammed as the prophet of God, complying with certain outward forms of his religion, he is held to be as good a Muslim as anyone else; and as the whole social and civil fabrics are built upon religion and the teachings of the Korán, the social position of every well-behaved[page 182] Mohammedan is practically equal. The possession of authority of any kind will naturally command a certain amount of respectful attention, and he who has any reason for seeking a favour from another is sure to adopt a more subservient mien; but beyond this, few such class distinctions are known as those common in Europe. The slave who, away from home, can behave as a gentleman, will be received as such, irrespective of his colour, and when freed he may aspire to any position under the Sultan. There are, indeed, many instances of black men having been ministers, governors, and even ambassadors to Europe, and such appointments are too common to excite astonishment. They have even, in the past, assisted in giving rise to the misconception that the people of Morocco were "Black-a-Moors."
In many households the slave becomes the trusted steward of his owner, and receives a sufficient allowance to live in comfort. He will possess a paper giving him his freedom on his master's death, and altogether he will have a very good time of it. The liberation of slaves is enjoined upon those who follow Mohammed as a most praiseworthy act, and as one which cannot fail to bring its own reward. But, like too many in our own land, they more often prefer to make use of what they possess till they start on that journey on which they can take nothing with them, and then affect generosity by bestowing upon others that over which they lose control.
One poor fellow whom I knew very well, who had been liberated on the death of his master, having lost his papers, was re-kidnapped and sold again to a man who was subsequently imprisoned for[page 183] fraud, when he got free and worked for some years as porter; but he was eventually denounced and put in irons in a dungeon as part of the property of his soi-disant master.
The ordinary place of the slave is much that of the average servant, but receiving only board, lodging, and scanty clothing, without pay, and being unable to change masters. Sometimes, however, they are permitted to beg or work for money to buy their own freedom, when they become, as it were, their own masters. On the whole, a jollier, harder-working, or better-tempered lot than these Negroes it would be hard to desire, and they are as light-hearted, fortunately, as true-hearted, even in the midst of cruel adversities.
The condition of a woman slave—to which, also, most of what has been said refers—is as much behind that of a man-slave as is that of a free-woman behind that of her lord. If she becomes her master's wife, the mother of a child, she is thereby freed, though she must remain in his service until his death, and she is only treated as an animal, not as a human being.