As an illustration of how cheap is human life among some tribes, Livingstone mentions the case of an elderly woman and her son, about three years old, who were bought for six yards of calico, the child being regarded twice as valuable as the mother. After the raids of slave-dealers, when the villages are pillaged and famine succeeds, boys and girls are often bought for a few handfuls of maize. Vigorous and healthy women who are ugly are cheaper than young girls, and old women have little value, and are bought for a trifle. Men are seldom purchased, because more difficult to manage or to transport. It will be remembered that the principal object for which slaves are held in the East is not their capability for labor.
Nationality, also, is an element affecting the price of slaves. Of those brought from the Bahr-el-Ghazal districts the Bongo are most in demand, because they are easily taught, faithful, good-looking, and industrious. The Niam-niam girls are more costly than the Bongo slaves, but they are so rarely in the market it is not easy to state their price. The Mittoo are of the least value, because so ugly, and the Babucker are so spirited and resolute that they are rarely sought. No kindness and no appeals avail to subdue their love of freedom or repress their struggles to escape. The Loobah and Abaka tribes are like them in this respect. The demand for slaves by the Mohammedan residents of the Western territories, as the Kredy Golo and Sehre, who greatly exceed the aboriginal population, is sufficient of itself to sustain a very considerable slave-trade. The number of the private slaves owned by the Moslems who have settled in various portions of Northern Africa Schweinfurth estimated to be about sixty thousand.
But this number is small compared with those who, along all the highways, are brought out of the interior to the great slave markets to supply the insatiable and licentious demands of Egypt, Arabia, Persia, and Asiatic Turkey. It is these, the prey of Arab rapacity or the pitiable and powerless victims of the selfishness and inhumanity of their fellow Africans, that form the numerous caravans moving toward the coast. It is these that drain and depopulate the tribes of Eastern and Central Africa. It is thus their very life blood is sacrificed to the luxurious caprices and sensuality of the Moslem race.
The territories that supply the slave-trade in northeastern Africa (Nile district) are the Galla countries to the south of Abyssinia, between latitude 3° and 8° north, the region between the white and blue Niles, Azoa, in the centre of Abyssinia, and its northwestern frontier, and the upper district of the Bahr-el-Ghazal. But the most fruitful sources of supply are the negro countries to the south of Darfoor. During the last forty years there has been an exodus from the numerous and unprotected Kredy tribes of 12,000 to 15,000 annually, to minister to the lust or laziness of the Mohammedans of the East. And the territories west of the Niam-niam tribe have been the principal supply in the northern part of Africa. This energetic race, under their king Mofio, has made constant raids upon their neighbors, thus furnishing vast numbers for exchange with Arab slave-merchants.
There is a portion of the country called Mrima or Sawahili, and formerly Zanguebar. The latter name will be recognized by older readers as that of a strip of sea coast from the mouth of Jub to Cape Delgado, or from the equator to S. lat. 10° 41´. This part of Eastern Africa now attracts the attention of the civilized world because of its connection with the slave-trade. By means of its ports three fourths of the slaves kidnapped or purchased in the interior are shipped abroad. Here is the famous port of Kilwa, “the hornets’ nest,” as Stanley names it, the great entrepot of slave-traders, who have received such scathing condemnation in Livingstone’s journals.
Zanzibar, an island near the east coast in lat. 6° S., is, however, the principal mart to which the ivory and slave merchants gather from the interior of Africa. The Banyans, who are among the more influential residents, are the principal traders in slaves, and have accumulated great wealth. Here tens of thousands of Africans are annually sold, some to be transported to the Spanish West Indies, but the great majority to Arabia.
The profits of this infamous traffic are so enormous as to offer a resistless temptation to the cupidity of the unscrupulous. The lucrative character of a business, though fraught with terrible evils and wrongs, has, not unfrequently, overcome the conscience, humanity, and even the religion of those acknowledged to be civilized if not Christian. The statements of the most trustworthy travellers in regard to the profitableness of the slave-trade tax the credulity of the most sceptical. The estimate that Mr. Stanley has given, as the result of a careful observation, must, we think, be accepted. “We will suppose,” says he, “for the sake of illustrating how trade with the interior is managed, that the Arab conveys by his caravan $5,000 worth of goods; at Unyanyembe, the goods are worth $10,000; at Ujiji they are worth $15,000, or have trebled in price. Seven dollars and fifty cents will purchase a slave in the markets of Ujiji, who will bring in Zanzibar thirty dollars. Ordinary men slaves may be purchased for six dollars who will sell for twenty-five dollars on the coast. We will say he purchases slaves to the full extent of his means; from these he will realize about $14,000, leaving a net profit of $9,000 from an investment of $5,000, in one trip from Zanzibar to Ujiji. It is from such a traffic that the Banyans have come to be ranked among the wealthiest of the 200,000 residents of Zanzibar.”
Livingstone was intensely absorbed with the passion for exploration, and longed to be the discoverer that should solve the great geographical problem which has enlisted the curiosity and toil of centuries, viz., the sources of the Nile. During eight years in his last expedition, he traversed Central Africa, enduring sufferings and sacrifices inexpressible, holding on with a fortitude and inflexibility never surpassed, till he sank down in death at Ilala, May 1, 1873. But this most illustrious of African explorers, when in weariness he was journeying toward Bangweolo for the last time, eager to learn some fact that would settle the great enigma with which Africa has baffled the nations and the ages, writes, “The discovery of the true source of the Nile is nothing to me except as it may be turned to the advantage of Christian missions.” So, too, in a letter that he sent by Stanley to Mr. Bennett, of New York, he writes, “If my disclosures regarding the terrible Ujijian slavery should lead to the suppression of the East Coast slave-trade, I shall regard that as a greater matter by far than the discovery of all the Nile sources together. This fine country is blighted as with a curse from above, in order that the slavery privileges of the Sultan of Zanzibar may not be infringed.”
It may safely be asserted that, had it not been for the slave-trade, this indomitable, sagacious, philanthropic traveller would have succeeded in laying the foundation for Christian missions in Central Africa, and also have given to the civilized world the discovery it has so laboriously sought. No progress can be made in the arts or commerce, no social and moral development among the African tribes can be secured so long as this system, the offspring of Moslem cupidity and lust, is permitted to desolate this fair land.
Stricken, suffering Africa! Despoiled and desolated by stronger and more civilized nations for centuries, her youth, her strength, her life-blood on the Western Coast, subsidized by force and barbarities unspeakable to minister to the comfort and affluence of England, Spain, and America! But the awful scourge that freighted the slave-ships of the Great Republic and caused the horrors of “the middle passage” has been, through the combined agency of England and America, inspired by the appeals of the philanthropic spirit of the last half-century, utterly suppressed. The Western Coast of that great continent has been emancipated, and is fast being regenerated. Instead of slave-ships in the lagoons and harbors waiting for the return of their armed crews from raids upon the villages along the coast and in the interior, thus stealing annually in the middle of the last century not less than 100,000 human beings, there are now populous villages springing up, the inhabitants of which are engaged in peaceful pursuits, and making rapid progress in all the arts and comforts of civilized life. The slave-ship is exchanged for the school-house, and with this most formidable barrier removed, the redemption of Western Africa has begun.