The heart of Africa, Vol. 2 (of 2)

by Georg August Schweinfurth

2. The second source is found amongst the Berta negroes above Fazogl, and amongst the Dinka above Sennaar, between the White and Blue Niles. These are likewise carried to Mussalemia and Khartoom, but in no considerable numbers.

3. The Agow, in the heart of Abyssinia between Tigre and Amhara, together with the people on the north-west frontier of the Abyssinian highland, are also exposed to plunder of the persons of their sons, on account of their disorganised condition and their position on the wild border-land. The channel for their dispersion is across the Red Sea to Djidda.

4. The upper district of the White Nile, inclusive of the Albert and Victoria Lakes, though the slave-trade really begins at latitude 5° N. The expedition of Sir Samuel Baker has stopped this source. The annual produce in the most favourable years did not exceed 1000.

5. The supply of slaves in the upper district of the Bahr-el-Ghazal is chiefly derived from the Bongo, Mittoo, and Babuckur. For the last twelve years the Gazelle has never been navigated by more than twenty boats. On their return journeys the soldiers of the ivory merchants carry their own slaves with them as payment and perquisites; but it is very rare for a boat to carry more than twenty or thirty of these slaves, so that the annual transport of slaves to Khartoom by this route never exceeded from 400 to 600. This fact is perfectly authentic, and thus it may be seen that even before Sir Samuel Baker’s expedition put a stop to it altogether, the slave-trade that was carried on down the river was quite insignificant compared to the overland traffic. For years there has been a public prohibition against bringing slaves down the White Nile into Khartoom, and ever and again stronger repressive measures have been introduced, which, however, have only had the effect of raising the land traffic to a premium; but as a general rule the Egyptian officials connive at the use of this comparatively unimportant channel of the trade, and pocket a quiet little revenue for themselves by demanding a sum varying from two to five dollars a head as hush-money. This expense, together with the continual risk of the property being confiscated in Khartoom, has always prevented the river trade from reaching a very flourishing condition; at all events, the Egyptian Government has hitherto had the best of it. Consuls from England, France, Germany, and Austria have been, and are still in residence at Khartoom, and a Copt was also temporarily appointed as consular agent for America; it was therefore an easy matter for the Egyptian officials to feign in the eyes of the world at large a wonderful amount of zeal and energy in the suppression of the slave-trade, especially as every confiscation threw the whole cargo into their hands; for the slaves were never sent back into their native lands, but the full-grown men were turned into soldiers, whilst the young girls and boys were divided at discretion amongst the troops of the garrison. In these transactions a formidable bond was always entered into by the receiver, from whom the former owner was at liberty at any time to re-purchase the slave.

CARAVAN ROADS.

6. As we have already seen, the great source of the slave-trade is to be found in the negro-countries to the south of Darfoor, which are included under the name of Dar Ferteet. The natives, who for the last forty years have been exposed to the rapacity of the slave-dealers, and have been annually exported to the number of from 12,000 to 15,000 souls, belong to the Kredy tribes; but the great bulk of the slaves come from the western Niam-niam territories, where the powerful King Mofio (whose residence is about under latitude 7° N. and longitude 24° E.) carries off on his own account, from the neighbouring nations who are not Niam-niam, large numbers of slaves, and sells them to the Gellahbas, by whom they are conveyed by the overland routes already mentioned across Kordofan to Aboo Harras in the Egyptian dominions. There are other routes that lead direct to Darfoor, whence caravans start twice a year to Siout. Kordofan is in many ways in direct communication with the most important markets of the slave trade; the following being the most frequented caravan roads: (a) from Aboo Harras to Khartoom viâ El-Obeïd; (b) from Aboo Harras eastwards to Mussalemia through Sennaar; (c) from Aboo Harras across the Begudah steppes to Dongola viâ El-Safy; (d) from Aboo Harras to Berber along the Nile, for the purpose either of crossing the great Nubian Desert or of keeping farther to the east across the Red Sea. All these routes are associated to me by the many reminiscences of slave-transport which I recall as having myself witnessed there.

7. A final and by no means unimportant source of the slave-trade is found in the mountain lands south of Kordofan. The general term for the negroes of these parts is Nooba,[89] a people that are much in demand on account of their beauty and intelligence. It was in these Nooba mountains that, after his bloody conquest of Kordofan, Mehemet Ali, the great reformer and usurper in Egypt, allowed kidnapping to be a legitimate source for the State revenue. From the slaves thus obtained he formed black regiments, by means of which he was to subdue the insalubrious Soudan, and paid his officers and subordinates with a portion of the plunder.[90]

As the Egyptian Government itself was the first to teach its subjects to kidnap slaves, it behoves it now in these more humane times to make amends for all its past delinquencies, and I most cordially acknowledge that the present ruler, with all the resources at his command, is striving most honourably to accomplish the task.

Slavery, with its inseparable adjunct the slave-trade, is almost as old as the world in which we dwell; there is not a page of history that does not bear its traces, and not a climate nor a people in which it has not made good its hold. An impartial survey of the past cannot but convince us that religious institutions have effected little or nothing in the cause of humanity, which has been left to take its own course of development. At the present day slavery is considered incompatible with Christian doctrine, but the history of ancient Christianity shows a different picture.[91] The oldest Fathers of the Church seem to have had no conception of there being anything wrong in possessing or selling slaves; for although Christianity inculcated the precepts of brotherly love, it also set forth the duty of slaves as slaves, rendering obedience and submission to those who were their masters. But the light that rose over Galilee emanated from a spirit so sublime that it has taken eighteen centuries to accomplish its course of penetrating the world, and only now is beginning to reveal itself in its true purity.

But nowhere in the world has slavery been so thoroughly engrafted and so widely disseminated as in Africa; the earliest mariners who circumnavigated its coasts found a system of kidnapping everywhere established on a firm basis, and extending in its business relations far into the interior of the continent; the idea arose how advantageously the owners of land in the distant East might cull the costly products of their soil by the hands of slaves; and the kernel of a single plant, the coffee berry, became the means of uniting the remotest lands, and had the effect of throwing a large portion of the human race into subjection to their fellows, whilst Christian nations became the patrons and the propagators of the disgraceful traffic. It has therefore happened in the natural course of things that philanthropists have first applied their energies to the slave-trade in the West; the East has still to tarry for an enlightenment which is destined in the fulness of time to gladden a future chapter of history.