"In Marrakesh now," he explains, "dealers buy the healthiest slaves they can find, and raise as many children by them as is possible. Then, so soon as the children are old enough to sell, they are sold, and when the mothers grow old and have no more children, they too are sold, but they do not fetch much then."
This statement takes all words from me, but my informant sees nothing startling in the case, and continues gravely: "From six years old they are sold to be companions, and from twelve they go to the hareems. Prices are good—too high indeed; fifty-four dollars I must have paid this afternoon to purchase one, and when Mulai Mohammed reigned the price would have been twenty, or less, and for that one would have bought fat slaves. Where there is one caravan now, there were ten of old times."
Only three slaves now, and they must go back to their masters to be sent to the market on another day, for the sun is below the horizon, the market almost empty, and the guards will be gathering at the city gates. Two dilals make a last despairing promenade, while their companions are busy recording prices and other details in connection with the afternoon's business. The purchased slaves, the auctioneer's gaudy clothing changed for their own, are being taken to the houses of their masters. We who live within the city walls must hasten now, for the time of gate-closing is upon us, and one may not stay outside.
It has been a great day. Many rich men have attended personally, or by their agents, to compete for the best favoured women of the household of the fallen kaid, and prices in one or two special cases ran beyond forty pounds (English money), so brisk was the bidding.
Outside the market-place a country Moor of the middle class is in charge of four young boy slaves, and is telling a friend what he paid for them. I learn that their price averaged eleven pounds apiece in English currency—two hundred and eighty dollars altogether in Moorish money, that they were all bred in Marrakesh by a dealer who keeps a large establishment of slaves, as one in England might keep a stud farm, and sells the children as they grow up. The purchaser of the quartette is going to take them to the North. He will pass the coming night in a fandak, and leave as soon after daybreak as the gates are opened. Some ten days' travel on foot will bring him to a certain city, where his merchandise should fetch four hundred dollars. The lads do not seem to be disturbed by the sale, or by thoughts of their future, and the dealer himself seems to be as near an approach to a commercial traveller as I have seen in Morocco. To him the whole transaction is on a par with selling eggs or fruit, and while he does not resent my interest, he does not pretend to understand it.
From the minaret that overlooks the mosque the mueddin calls for the evening prayer; from the side of the Kutubia Tower and the minaret of Sidi bel Abbas, as from all the lesser mosques, the cry is taken up. Lepers pass out of the city on their way to Elhara; beggars shuffle off to their dens; storks standing on the flat house-tops survey the familiar scene gravely but with interest. Doubtless the dilals and all who sent their slaves to the market to be sold this afternoon will respond to the mueddins' summons with grateful hearts, and Sidi bel Abbas, patron saint of Red Marrakesh, will hardly go unthanked.