Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/112

 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.





 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 heroic resistance. — Cruelty of the victors. — Destruction of villages. The captives sold into slavery.

Central and Eastern Africa were ravaged for slaves to supply the American market, Nubia and other districts were equally laid under 