It must not, however, be supposed that the minor retail trade in slaves is uniformly lucrative. The smaller Gellahbas are exposed to numberless mischances; if their ox or ass should die upon the journey, they must at once dispose of their other property at any price; then, again, they are liable to suffer from a lack of corn during their journey across the wilderness; and, what is perhaps the sorest disaster that can befall them, their slaves so frequently run away, that their profits are dispersed before they are realised. Their powers of endurance are truly wonderful. I repeatedly asked them what induced them to leave their homes, to change their mode of living, and to suffer the greatest hardships in a strange land, all for the sake of pursuing an occupation that only in the rarest cases would keep them from absolute want. “We want ‘groosh’” (piastres), they would reply; “so why should we live at home?” And when I further urged that they had far better lead respectable lives, and either grow corn or breed cattle, they answered, “No, that wouldn’t answer our purpose; when we are at home, we are exhausted by the demands of the Government, and corn doesn’t bring us in any money.” Not that the Government is really so hard upon the people as they assert; the fact is that they are incorrigibly lazy, and have so great a dislike to work of any sort that they do not care to be able to pay their taxes, which do not much exceed those that are usually demanded in Egypt proper. To expect that these slave-traders should renounce of their own accord the business which suits them so completely, and for which they will endure any amount of hardship, would be almost as unreasonable as to expect Esquimaux to grow melons.
All trade is undeniably in a very stagnant condition in the Egyptian Soudan; the rich man gives nothing away, but lives like a dog, and has no desire beyond that of privately amassing wealth; of domestic comfort, or luxury even on the limited Oriental scale, he has not the faintest conception. There is consequently no demand for labour, no circulation of money in wages, and it is manifestly impossible for trade to flourish as long as the rich man consumes nothing; and equally impossible for the poor man to thrive while the rich man keeps his retinue of slaves, who do all he wants without requiring payment. Thus slavery itself ever reproduces slavery.
One material alleviation to the position of the Gellahbas is the open hospitality they meet with in all the Seribas. Besides the mercenaries of the various ivory companies—the controllers, clerks, agents, storekeepers, and other officials—they find numbers of their compatriots and brethren in the faith who have taken up their abode in these lands, and who subsist free of expense on what is gained by the sweat of the negroes; mere idle drones, as it were, living on the produce of the workers. The rabble thus collected consists partly of escaped convicts and partly of refugees or outlaws who are evading their proper punishment, and if they could be swept from off the face of the land, there would then be food enough for half a score of regiments, should the Egyptian Government determine to station them in the country.
Just in the same way as in the Egyptian Soudan, the actual cost of travelling in these lands is next to nothing; every new comer to a Seriba is treated to kissere and melah, and his slaves and donkey are provided with corn enough to keep them from starvation. Wherever they go the Gellahbas may stay as long as they please, and accordingly they wander all over the district from the west to the east, as far as the Rohl and the Dyemit, and only just before the commencement of the rainy season they reassemble at their common place of rendezvous in Seebehr’s Seriba, where they re-organise their caravans, and make their final preparations for starting for Kordofan.
THREE CLASSES OF GELLAHBAS.
The Gellahbas who, either on their own account or as representatives of others, carry on the slave-trade in this district may be divided into three classes:—
1. The petty dealers, who, with only a single ass or bullock, come in January and return in March or April.
2. The agents or partners of the great slave merchants in Darfoor and Kordofan, who have settled in the Seribas, nearly always in the capacity of Fakis.
3. The colonised slave-dealers, who live on their own property in the Dehms of the west.
The last of these form the only class who ever penetrate beyond the bounds of the Seriba district into the negro-countries. They nearly all direct their course from the Dehms in Dar Ferteet to the territories of Mofio, the great Niam-niam king of the west, and are accompanied by considerable bands of armed men, whom they recruit for this purpose from the best of their slaves. Contrary to the policy of the Khartoom ivory-merchants, the Gellahbas have by degrees supplied King Mofio with such a number of firearms that he is now said to have at his command a force of 300 fully-equipped warriors, a formidable fighting-force with which he seriously threatens any expedition of the Khartoomers that may enter his dominions. His store of slaves appears absolutely inexhaustible; year after year his territories go on yielding thousands upon thousands, which he obtains either from the slave tribes[84] that he has subjected or by raids organised against the surrounding nations.