"The serviles at Zanzibar have played their Arab masters some notable tricks. Many a severe lord has perished by the hand of a slave. Several have lost their eyes by the dagger's point during sleep. Curious tales are told of ingenious servile conspiracy. Mohammed bin Sayf, a Zanzibar Arab, remarkable for household discipline, was brought to grief by Kombo, his slave, who stole a basket of nutmegs from the Prince, and, hiding them in his master's house, denounced him of theft. Fahl bin Nasr, a travelling merchant, when passing through Ugogo, nearly lost his life in consequence of a slave having privily informed the people that his patron had been killing crocodiles and preserving their fat for poison. In both these cases the slaves were not punished; they had acted, it was believed, according to the true instincts of servile nature, and chastisement would have caused desertion, not improvement.
"Prices of slaves range from six feet of unbleached domestics, or a few pounds of grain in time of famine, to seventy dollars, equal to £15. The slaves are cheapest in the interior, on account of the frequency of desertion: about Unyamwezi they are dearer, and most expensive in the island of Zanzibar.
"At Zanzibar the price of a boy under puberty is from fifteen to thirty dollars. A youth till the age of fifteen is worth a little less. A man in the prime of life, from twenty-five to forty, fetches from thirteen to twenty dollars; after that age he may be bought from ten to thirteen. Educated slaves, fitted for the work of factors, are sold from twenty-five to seventy dollars and at fancy prices. The price of females is everywhere about one-third higher than that of males. At Zanzibar the ushur, or custom-dues, vary according to the race of the slave: the Wahiao, Wangindo, and other serviles imported from Kilwa pay one dollar per head, from the Mrima or maritime regions two dollars, and from Unyamwezi, Ujiji, and the rest of the interior three dollars. At the central depôt, Unyanyembe, where slaves are considered neither cheap nor dear, the value of a boy ranges between eight and ten doti, or double cloths; a youth, from nine to eleven; a man in prime, from five to ten, and past his prime from four to six. In some parts of the interior men are dearer than children under puberty. In the cheapest places, as in Karagwah and Urori, a boy costs three shukkahs of cloth, and three fundo or thirty strings of coral beads; a youth, from ten to fifteen fundo; a man in prime, from eight to ten; and no one will purchase an old man. These general notes must not, however, be applied to particular tribes: as with ivory and other valuable commodities, the amount and the description of the circulating medium vary at almost every march.
"The average of yearly import into the island of Zanzibar was fourteen thousand head of slaves, the extremes being nine thousand and twenty thousand. The loss by mortality and desertion is thirty per cent. per annum; thus, the whole gang must be renewed between the third and fourth year.
"By a stretch of power slavery might readily be abolished in the island of Zanzibar, and in due time, after the first confusion, the measure would doubtless be found as profitable as it is now unpalatable to the landed proprietors and to the commercial body. A 'sentimental squadron,' like the West African, would easily, by means of steam, prevent any regular exportation to the Asiatic continent. But these measures would deal only with effects, leaving the causes in full vigour; they would strike at the bole and branches, the root retaining sufficient vitality to resume its functions as soon as relieved of the pressure from without. Neither treaty nor fleet would avail permanently to arrest the course of slavery upon the seaboard, much less would it act in the far realms of the interior. At present the African will not work; the purchase of predial slaves to till the harvest for him, is the great aim of his life. When a more extensive intercourse with the maritime regions shall beget wants which compel the barbarian, now contented with doing nothing and having nothing, to that individual exertion and that mutual dependency which render serfdom a moral impossibility in the more advanced stages of human society—when man, now valueless except to himself, shall become more precious by his labour than by his sale, in fact an article so expensive that strangers cannot afford to buy him—then we may expect to witness the extinction of the evil. Thus, and thus only, can 'Rachel, still weeping for her children,' in the evening of her days, be made happy.
"Meanwhile, the philanthropist, who after sowing the good seed has sense and patience to consign the gathering of the crop to posterity, will hear with pleasure that the extinction of slavery would be hailed with delight by the great mass throughout the length and breadth of Eastern Africa. This people, 'robbed and spoiled' by their oppressors, who are legionary, call themselves 'the meat,' and the slave-dealers 'the knife:' they hate and fear their own demon Moloch, but they lack unanimity to free their necks from his yoke. Africa still 'lies in her blood,' but the progress of human society, and the straiter bonds which unite man with man, shall eventually rescue her from her old pitiable fate."