A SLAVE-GANG ON THE ROAD.
"It was estimated by Sir Samuel Baker," replied Abdul, "that not less than fifty thousand slaves were carried every year from the interior to the sea-coast, or kept in the camps of the slave-traders. The capture of fifty or a hundred slaves means the destruction of one or more villages, and the death of fifty or a hundred innocent persons while the destruction is going on. The traders induce tribes that would otherwise be at peace to make war on each other, by agreeing to buy all the prisoners. Whole districts are depopulated, life and property are insecure, and for every slave that is brought away it is safe to say that three or four of his kindred have been killed or die of starvation. It was a noble impulse of the Khedive to put an end to this state of affairs and remove the stigma of slave-dealing from his country."
"But they still have slavery in Egypt, do they not?" inquired one of the boys.
"Yes," was the reply, "slavery exists here, as Egypt is a Moslem country, and the Koran expressly allows it. But the form is growing milder every year, as the government does not protect it. Under Ismail Pacha a man might keep slaves, but if they ran away from him he could not call the police to assist in their capture, as he formerly was able to do. If they chose to stay away they could do so, without fear of being taken back; the result was that every slave-owner was obliged to treat his human property so kindly that there would be no inducement to leave him. Traffic in slaves is not permitted, and consequently the institution is not flourishing, and will soon disappear altogether.
"The efforts of Livingstone, Stanley, and other travellers in Central Africa have done much to throw light on the slave-trade, and to persuade some of the African kings and chiefs to abandon it. The only Europeans who encourage it at all now are the Portuguese traders, who have their stations on the east coast of Africa, and even their support to it is generally given in an underhand way. The most extensive slave-dealers are the Arabs, who are not troubled by any religious scruples on the subject, and find a market for their captives among people of similar belief with themselves.
"When we get fairly into Central Africa you will probably see something of the system of slavery; so we'll drop the subject now, and I'll tell you how Baker's expedition was fitted out.