The statistics of the slave-trade are difficult to obtain with absolute accuracy, but an adequate approximation may be reached. It is safe to say that the annual export of slaves from the country lying between the Red Sea and the Great Desert is twenty-five thousand a year, distributed as follows: From Abyssinia, carried to Jaffa or Gallabat, ten thousand; issuing by other routes of Abyssinia, five thousand; by the Blue Nile, three thousand; by the White Nile, seven thousand. To obtain these twenty-five thousand slaves and sell them in market, more than fifteen thousand are annually killed, and often the mortality reaches the terrible figure of fifty thousand. It is a fair estimate that fifty thousand children are stolen from their parents every year. Of the number forced into slavery, fifteen thousand being boys and ten thousand girls, it is found that about six thousand go to Lower Egypt, two thousand are made soldiers, nine thousand concubines, five hundred eunuchs, five thousand cooks or servants, while ten thousand eventually die from the climate, and three thousand obtain their papers of freedom. They are dispersed over three million square miles of territory, and their blood finally mingles with that of the Turk, the Arab, and the European. The best black soldiers are recruited from the Dinkas, who are strong, handsome Negroes, the finest of the White Nile. The other races are thickly built and clumsy, and are never ornamental; the Abyssinians, for whatever service and of whatever class, excel all their rival victims in slavery. They are quiet and subdued, and seldom treacherous or insubordinate. They prefer slavery, many of them, to freedom, because they have no aspirations that are inordinate. The girls are delicate, and not built for severe labor. Though born and bred in a country where concubines are as legitimate and as much honored as wives, they revolt against the terrors of polygamy.
In Abyssinia there is a feature of the slave-commerce which does not seem to exist elsewhere. The natives themselves enslave their own countrymen and countrywomen. Since the death of Theodore, the country has been the scene of complex civil war. Each tribe is in war against its neighbor; and when the issue comes to a decisive battle, the victor despoils his antagonist of all his property, makes merchandise of the children, and forwards them to the Egyptian post of Gallabat, where they find a ready and active market. All along the frontier there is no attempt to prevent slavery. It exists with the sanction of the officials, and by their direct co-operation. Another profession is that of secret kidnappers. The world knows little how much finesse and depravity and duplicity are required in this business. The impression is abroad, that the slave-trade provokes nothing more than murder, theft, arson, and rape. But it is a disgraceful fact that some traders habitually practice the most inhuman deception to accomplish their end. They frequently settle down in communities and households in the guise of benefactors, and while so situated they register each desirable boy and girl, and afterward conspire to kidnap or kill them, as chance may have it. Such is the story of the African slave-trade of to-day.
FOOTNOTE:
[34] Wilson’s “Western Africa.”
CHAPTER X. THE REPUBLIC OF LIBERIA.
The Republic of Liberia lies on the west coast of Africa, and was settled by emigrants from the United States in 1822.
The founders of this government met with many obstacles: First, disease; then opposition from the natives; all of which, however, they heroically overcame.
The territory owned by the Liberian government extends some six hundred miles along the West African coast, and reaches back indefinitely towards the interior, the native title to which has been fairly purchased.