The remote position of the Seribas places the controllers far beyond any authority, and makes them quite independent of the jurisdiction of the chiefs of the trading-firms, who are most of them settled in Khartoom without much care for either their own advantage or for that of the country; it thus becomes necessary to appoint trustworthy people to the post, and consequently the head-controllers are in many cases slaves who have been reared in their master’s house. A controller has every opportunity if he pleases of coming to an arrangement with the soldiers and other officials, and in concert with them of acting very much to his chiefs disadvantage; or he might sell the negroes on his territories to the Gellahbas, turn the proceeds into copper, and retire as a rich man to Darfoor, already a place of refuge for many delinquents from the Egyptian Soudan.
The sub-controllers and agents in the subsidiary Seribas are, on the other hand, far less trustworthy; their position is often held only for a temporary period, and consequently their interests are not so firmly bound up with those of their chiefs as those of his former slaves. Then, too, the smaller Seribas are often so far apart that the Vokeel can transact all their business without any supervision from the head controller; all this is well known to the itinerant slave-dealers, who have a special preference for visiting these minor settlements, because they are aware that they can there buy up numbers of boys and girls, disregardful of the fact that, as future bearers and agricultural labourers, the children are vassals belonging to the soil, and form part and parcel of the property of the head of the firm.
After thus considering slave-labour in its separate branches, and gaining some idea of the immense and wasteful expenditure of human energy that goes on in the Seribas of the Khartoomers, we may turn our attention to the numerical proportion of the foreign settlers (with whom must be included their private slaves) to the actual aboriginal population. The following table is founded upon a careful calculation; the results are given in round numbers, as fuller details would demand more space than could be afforded here.
CONSUMERS AND PRODUCERS.
Proportions of the Population in the District of the Khartoomers’ Seribas on the Bahr-el-Ghazal.
| Consumers. | |
| Nubian soldiers, recruited in Khartoom and consisting of natives ofDongola, Sheygieh, Sennaar, Kordofan, various Bedouins, &c. | 5,000 |
| Black slave troops (Farookh)[88] | 5,000 |
| Fellow-boarders with the Nubian idlers from the Soudan, living herein order to procure corn cheaply and without any trouble | 1,000 |
| Gellahbas settled in Dar Ferteet, and agents in the Seribas,Fakis, &c. | 2,000 |
| Itinerant Gellahbas, who enter the country in the winter | 2,000 |
| Private slaves belonging to the colonised Mohammedan population | 40,000 |
| Total | 55,000 |
| Producers. | |
| Bongo | 100,000 |
| Mittoo (including Loubah, Madi, &c.) | 30,000 |
| Dyoor | 10,000 |
| Golo | 6,000 |
| Sehre | 4,000 |
| Kredy | 20,000 |
| Small tribes of natives belonging to the immediate environs of the Seribas, such as the Dembo, Bimberry, Manga, &c. | 20,000 |
| Total | 190,000 |
In the next place let us turn our attention to those slaves who are regarded as actual merchandise, and who are dragged into bondage from the Upper Nile lands solely for purposes of profit. In order to demonstrate how important at the present time is the part taken by the district of the Gazelle in the entire African slave-trade, I will take a brief survey of the sources which all the year round supply the endless succession of the dealers with fresh stores of living wares, and which, branching off into three great highways to the north, yield up their very life-blood to gratify the insatiable and luxurious demands of Egypt, Arabia, Persia, and Asiatic Turkey. Previous travellers have estimated the total of the annual traffic in this immense region to be 25,000, but I shall show by a very summary reckoning that this is far too low a computation. The three currents for the slave-trade in north-east Africa (a region corresponding to what may be geographically termed the “Nile district”) are the natural highways of the Nile and the Red Sea, and the much frequented caravan roads that, traversing the deserts at no great distance to the west of the Nile, find their outlet either in Siout or near Cairo. As a proof of how little these roads even now are known, I may mention that when, in the summer of 1871, a caravan with 2000 slaves arrived direct from Wadai, it caused quite a sensation in the neighbourhood of the pyramids of Gizeh; it was supposed to have traversed a geographical terra incognita, and it divided and dispersed itself as mysteriously as it came. It is far more difficult to place the deserts under inspection than the ocean, and this is especially the case in the vicinity of a river, where a caravan can easily supply itself with water for many days. The borders of a desert are like the coasts of an unnavigable ocean. The plan, however, of establishing a system of control along the borders of the Nile Valley, corresponding to the coastguard cruisers on our seas, has never yet been tried.
SOURCES OF THE SLAVE-TRADE.
The following are the territories that form the sources of the slave-trade in North-Eastern Africa (Nile district):—
1. The Galla countries to the south of Abyssinia, between latitude 3° and 8° N. The outlets from them are: (a) viâ Shoa to Zeyla; (b) viâ Godyam through Abyssinia to Matamma and Suakin, or to Massowa and smaller unguarded coast towns; (c) viâ Fazogl to Sennaar, where the largest market is not in, but above Khartoom, in a place called Mussalemia; the merchandise brought by this route is abundant and valuable. According to the reports of the Abyssinian collectors of customs the number of slaves in Matamma (Gallabat) amounted in 1865 alone to 18,000.