caused by the traffic on the coast; and ere long, the very negroes who seemed safest in their central obscurities, were drained away to meet the increasing demand; either led captive by warlike visitants from the west, or handed from tribe to tribe till they reached the sea. In this way, eventually, Central Africa, with its teeming myriads of negroes, came to be the great mother of slaves for exportation, and the negro villages on the coast the warehouses, as it were, where the slaves were stowed away till the ships of the white men arrived to carry them off.

European skill and foresight assisted in giving constancy and regularity to the supply of negroes from the interior. At first the slave vessels only visited the Guinea coast, and bargained with the negroes of the villages there for what quantity of wax, or gold, or negroes they had to give. But this was a clumsy way of conducting business. The ships had to sail along a large tract of coast, picking up a few negroes at one place, and a little ivory or gold at another; sometimes even the natives of a village might have no elephants' teeth and no negroes to give; and even under the most favorable circumstances, it took a considerable time to procure a decent cargo. No coast is so pestilential as that of Africa, and hence the service was very repulsive and very dangerous. As an improvement on this method of trading, the plan was adopted very early of planting small settlements of Europeans at intervals along the slave-coast, whose business it should be to negotiate with the negroes, stimulate them to activity in their slave-hunting expeditions, purchase the slaves brought in, and warehouse them until the arrival of the ships. These settlements were called slave factories. Factories of this kind were planted all along the western coast from Cape Verd to the equator, by English, French, Dutch, and Portuguese traders. Their appearance, the character of the men employed in them, their internal arrangements, and their mode of carrying on the traffic, are well described in the following extract from Mr. Howison's book on "European Colonies":

"As soon as the parties concerned had fixed upon the site of their proposed commercial establishment, they began to erect a fort of greater or less magnitude, having previously obtained permission to that effect from the natives. The most convenient situation for a building of the kind was considered to be at the confluence of a river with the sea, or upon an island lying within a few miles of the coast. In the first case, there was the advantage of inland navigation; and in the second, that of the security and defensibleness of an insular position, besides its being more cool and healthy than any other.

The walls of the fort enclosed a considerable space of ground, upon which were built the necessary magazines for the reception of merchandise, and also barracks for the soldiers and artificers, and a depôt for slaves; so that, in the event of external hostilities, the gates might be shut, and the persons and the property belonging to the establishment placed in security. The quarters for the officers and agents employed at the factory were in general erected upon the ramparts, or at least adjoining them; while the negroes in their service, and any others that might be attracted to the spot, placed their huts outside of the walls of the fort, but under the protection of its guns. 108619B

The command of the establishment was vested in the hands of one individ ual, who had various subordinates, according to the extent of the trade carried on at the place; and if the troops who garrisoned the fort exceeded twenty or thirty, a commissioned officer usually had charge of them. The most remarkable forts were St. George del Mina, erected by the Portuguese, though it subsequently fell into the hands of the Dutch; Cape Coast Castle, the principal establishment of the English; Fort Louis, at the mouth of the Senegal, geaerally occupied by the French; and Goree, situated upon an island of the same name, near Cape Verd. Most of these forts mounted from fifty to sixty pieces of cannon, and contained large reservoirs for water, and were not only impregnable to the negroes, but capable of standing a regular siege by a European force.

The individuals next in importance to the director or governor were the factors, who ranked according to their standing in the company's service. The seniors generally remained at headquarters, and had the immediate management of the trade there, and the care of the supplies of European merchandise which were always kept in store. The junior factors were employed in carrying on the traffic in the interior of the country, which they did sometimes by ascending the rivers in armed vessels, and exchanging various articles for slaves, gold-dust, and ivory, with the negroes inhabiting the neighborhood; and sometimes by establishing themselves for several months in a large town or populous district, and, as it were, keeping a shop to which the natives might resort for traffic.

The European subordinates of the establishment consisted of clerks, bookkeepers, warehousemen, artificers, mechanics, gunners, and private soldiers, all of whom had particular quarters assigned for their abode, and lived under military discipline. The soldiers employed in the service of the different African companies were mostly invalids, and persons who had been dismissed from the army on account of bad conduct. Destitute of the means of subsistence at home, such men willingly engaged to go to the coast of Africa, where they knew they would be permitted to lead a life of ease, indolence, and licentiousness, and be exposed to no danger except that of a deadly climate, which was in reality the most certain and inevitable one that they could anywhere encounter. Few of the troops in any of the forts were fit for active duty, which was of the less consequence, because they were seldom or never required to fight except upon the ramparts of the place in which they might be quartered, and not often even there. Hence they spent their time in smoking, in drinking palm wine, and in gaming, and were generally carried off by fever or dissipation within two years after their arrival in the country. A stranger, on first visiting any of the African forts, felt that there was something both horrible and ludicrous in the appearance of its garrison; for the individuals composing it appeared ghastly, debilitated, and diseased, to a degree that is unknown in other climates; and their tattered and soiled uniforms, resembling each other only in meanness, and not in color, suggested the idea of the wearers being a band of drunken deserters, or of starved and maltreated prisoners of war.

Each company was in the practice of annually sending a certain number of ships to its respective establishments, freighted with European goods suitable for traffic; while its factors in Africa had in the meantime been collecting slaves, ivory, gumarabic, and other productions of the country; so that the vessels on their arrival suffered no detention, but always found a return cargo ready for them.

Though the forts were principally employed as places of safe deposit for merchandise received from Europe or collected at outposts, they were also generally the scene of a considerable trade, being resorted to for that purpose not only by the coast negroes, but often also by dealers from the interior of the country, who would bring slaves, ivory, and gold-dust for traffic. Persons of this description were always honorably, and even ceremoniously received by the governor or by the factors, and conciliated in every possible way, lest they might carry their goods to another market. They were invited to enter the fort, and were treated with liquors, sweetmeats, and presents, and urged to drink freely; and no sooner did they show symptoms of confusion of ideas, than the factors proposed to trade with them, and displayed the articles which they were disposed to give in exchange for their slaves, &c. The unsuspicious. negro-merchant, dazzled by the variety of tempting objects placed before him, and exhilarated by wine or brandy, was easily led to conclude a bargain little advantageous to himself; and before he had fully recovered his senses, his slaves, ivory, and gold-dust were transferred to the stores of the factory, and he was obliged to be contented with what he had in his moments of inebriety agreed to accept in exchange for them."

From this extract, it appears that not only did the managers of these facto-7 ries receive all the negroes who might be brought down to the coast, but that emissaries, "junior factors," as they were called, penetrated into the interior, as if thoroughly to infect the central tribes with the spirit of commerce. The result of this was the creation of large slave-markets in the interior, where the negro slaves were collected for sale, and where slave-merchants, whether negro, Arabic, or European, met to conclude their wholesale bargains. One of these great slave-markets was at Timbuctoo; but for the most part the slaves were brought down in droves by Slatees, or negro slave-merchants, to the European factories on the coast. At the time that Park traveled in Africa, so completely had the negroes of the interior become possessed with the trading spirit, so much had the capture and abduction of negroes grown into a profession, that these native slave-merchants were observed to treat the slaves they were driving to the coast with considerable kindness. The negroes were, indeed, chained together to prevent their escape. Those who were refractory had a thick billet of wood fastened to their ankle; and as the poor wretches quitting their native spots became sullen and moody, their limbs at the same time swelling and breaking out in sores with the fatigue of traveling, it was often necessary to apply the whip. Still, the Slatees were not wantonly cruel; and there was nothing they liked better than to see their slaves merry. Occasionally they would halt in their march, and encourage the negroes to sing their

snatches of song, or play their games of hazard, or dance under the shade of the tamarind tree. This, however, was only the case with the professional slave-driver, who was commissioned to convey the negroes to the coast; and if we wish to form a conception of the extent and intricate working of the curse inflicted upon the negroes by their contact with white men, we must set ourselves to imagine all the previous kidnapping and fighting which must have been necessary to procure every one of these droves which the Slatees carried down. What a number of processes must have conspired to bring a sufficient number of slaves together to form a drove ! In one case, it would be a negro master selling a number of his spare slaves; and what an amount of suffering even in this case must there have been arising from the separation of relatives! In another case, it would be a father selling his son, or a son selling his old father, or a creditor selling his insolvent debtor. In a third, it would be a starving family voluntarily surrendering itself to slavery. When a scarcity occurred, instances used to be frequent of famishing negroes coming to the British stations in Africa and begging "to be put upon the slave-chain." In a fourth case it would be a savage selling the boy or girl he had kidnapped a week ago on purpose. In a fifth, it would be a petty negro chief disposing of twenty or thirty negroes taken alive in a recent attack upon a village at a little distance from his own. Sometimes these forays in quest of negroes to sell are on a very large scale, and then they are called slave-hunts. The king of one negro country collects a large army, and makes an expedition into the territories of another negro king, ravaging and making prisoners as he goes. If the inhabitants make a stand against him, a battle ensues, in which the invading army is generally victorious. As many are killed as may be necessary to decide that such is the case; and the captives are driven away in thousands, to be kept on the property of the victor till he finds opportunities of selling them. In 1794, the king of the southern Foulahs, a powerful tribe in Nigritia, was known to have an army of 16,000 men constantly employed in these slave-hunting expeditions into his neighbors' territories. The slaves they procured made the largest item in his revenue.

CHAPTER VIII.

SLAVE TRAFFIC OF THE LEVANT.-NUBIAN SLAVES.

The Mohammedan slave-trade.-Nubian slaves captured for the slave markets of the Levant.-Mohammed Ali.-Grand expeditions for hunting.-Annual tribute of slaves. -The encampment.-Attack upon the villages.-Courage of the natives.-Their heroio resistance.-Cruelty of the victors.-Destruction of villages. The captives sold into

slavery.

WHILE Central and Eastern Africa were ravaged for slaves to supply the

American market, Nubia and other districts were equally laid under contribu

tion to supply the slave markets of the Levant, of Egypt, Turkey and the East. The one may be called the Christian, the other the Mohammedan Slave Trade. The main difference between the two trades was, that while the Europeans generally bought slaves after they had been captured, the less fastidious Turks captured slaves for themselves. We have been accustomed to interest ourselves so much in the western or Christian slave-trade, that we have paid but little attention to the other. While the one trade has been legally abolished, the other is carried on as vigorously as ever. A traffic in negroes

While

is at present going on between Negroland and the whole of the East. it has been declared illegal to carry away a negro from the coast of Guinea, negroes are bought and sold daily in the public slave markets of Cairo and Constantinople.

When Dr. Madden, of England, went to Egypt in 1840, as the bearer of a letter from the Anti-Slavery Convention to Mohammed Ali, the ruler of Egypt, congratulating him upon his having issued an order abolishing the slave hunts, to his great surprise, he found that the order, though issued, had never been enforced, and probably never would be. The truth is, that Mohammed himself had brought the system of hunting slaves to a high degree of perfection. Nubia was his principal hunting ground, into which he permitted no intruder. His own expeditions were conducted on a grand scale; and generally took place after the rainy season. From Dr. Madden's work, we extract a description of these slave hunts: "The capturing expedition consists of from 1000 to 2000 regular foot soldiers; from 400 to 800 mounted Bedouins, armed with guns and pistols; from 300 to 500 militia, half-naked savages on dromedaries, armed with spears, and 1000 more on foot, armed with small lances. As soon as everything is ready, the march begins. They usually take from two to four field-pieces, and only sufficient bread for the first eight days. They take by force on the route such oxen, sheep, and other cattle as they may need, making no reparation and listening to no complaints, as the governor himself is present.

As soon as they arrive at the nearest mountains in Nubia, the inhabitants are asked to give the appointed number of slaves as their customary tribute. This is usually done with readiness, as they are well aware that by an obstinate refusal, they expose themselves to far greater sufferings. If the slaves are given without resistance, the inhabitants of that mountain are preserved from the horrors of an open attack; but as the food of the soldiers begins to fail about that time, the poor people are obliged to procure the necessary provisions as well as the specified number of slaves, and the Turks do not consider whether the harvest has been good or bad. All that is not freely given, the soldiers take by force. Like so many bloodhounds, they know how to discover the hidden stores, and frequently leave these unfortunate people scarcely a loaf for the next day. They then proceed on to the more distant mountains: here they consider themselves to be in the land of an enemy; they encamp near the mountain which they intend to take by storm the following day, or immediately, if it is practicable. But before the attack commences, they endeavor to settle