latter half of the fifteenth century, when the Portuguese, under Prince Henry the Navigator, made their first venture in "black men and golddust." The awful scourge of colonial slavery and its monstrous crime of slave hunting and transportation followed with an amazingly rapid development. Its history, covering a period of over two hundred and fifty years, presents perhaps the most colossal wrong that man has ever inflicted upon man, unless we except the age-long records of war. Commerce in slaves was common in Russia until, in the reign of Alexander II., it came to an end with the abolition of serfdom in 1861. By this memorable act of emancipation, in which were included the serfs of the State, of the imperial appanages, and of the individual proprietors as well, over forty million bondmen were set free. Mohammedanism has been throughout its history responsible for the slave-hunt and the slave-market as necessary accompaniments to the slavery it recognizes and sanctions.2 The African slave-trade in modern times has been maintained to a large extent for the supply of Moslem markets in Arabia, Persia, Turkey, Egypt, Tripoli, and Morocco.

The main avenues of the modern slave-traffic in Africa.

Livingstone was the instrument used by Providence to awaken civilized nations to the enormity of this great evil and its awful cruelties. He pronounced it, in words which have lived and burned in the conscience of Christendom, to be "the open sore of the world." Since the abolition of the external traffic on the West Coast, which drained the deep recesses of the Continent for the supply of the colonial markets, there still lingers an internal trade among the native tribes of West Africa. The main avenues of the traffic, however, have branched out in three directions from East Central Africa and the Soudan as centres, and along these dreary paths the tramp of the 2 Ibid., p. 222.

1 Ingram, pp. 140-153.

3 ་་ Immediately after the discovery of the New World, the demand for labour in its mines and plantations, of which the Western nations of Europe were rapidly taking possession, gave an immense stimulus to the traffic in slaves from Africa. This traffic was at first promoted most actively by the Spaniards, but in 1562 Sir John Hawkins engaged English ships in it, and thereafter it became a recognized department of English commerce. At least four companies were formed in succession, each of which possessed under Royal charter the sole right to traffic with Africa, but they were unable to exclude other traders, and none survived for any length of time. The Revolution of 1688 threw the trade open, and from this time it flourished. In the year 1771 no fewer than 192 ships sailed from England for Africa (107 of these from Liverpool), with provision for the transport of 47, 146 slaves. The entries show that from 1700 to 1786 the number of slaves imported into Jamaica alone was 610,000, or an average of 7000 a year."-George Robson, D.D., "The Story of Our Jamaica Mission," p. 12.

ghastly caravans may still be heard. One of these finds its outlet from the Western Soudan in a northerly direction through the burning regions of the Sahara to the Mohammedan States of North Africa, especially Tripoli and Morocco. Another is eastward to the coast, whence the slaves are conveyed to the markets in Arabia, Persia, and Turkey in the north, and, until recently, to Madagascar in the south. The third route is by the Nile Valley, through which a large traffic was formerly carried on, but which in late years has been so carefully guarded that it is not available except in instances where secrecy or cunning can succeed in eluding detection. According to a careful estimate, based upon the personal investigations of such explorers as Livingstone, Gordon, Cameron, Lavigerie, and others, the annual sacrifice of lives in Africa by the slave-trade, as conducted a generation ago, was not less than five hundred thousand. If we add to this the victims transported into slavery and those exiled from their burning villages and their ruined homes, we may regard the total number of those who were at that time victims to the slave-trader's violence as not less than two millions annually.2 Much has been done within a quarter of a century to mitigate these horrors and lessen their volume, but that the slave-trade still exists to an extent hardly realized by Christendom is a fact which cannot be doubted. It is to a lamentable extent a feature of internal commerce between the African tribes themselves, and all the efforts to seal its outlets along the extensive unguarded coast-line of East Africa have been as yet only partially successful.

The slave-markets of the West Coast and its hinterland.

In the Congo Free State energetic attempts have been made, with considerable success, to break up the Arab strongholds of the traffic in the northeasterly regions of the State. The action of the Brussels Conference of 1889-90, which had for one of its objects the suppression of the slavetrade, has given a stimulus among all civilized nations to aggressive and benevolent efforts for its repression. It is in harmony with the agreement entered upon at that Conference that the

1 "There can be little doubt that in course of time slavery in Egypt will entirely disappear, provided continual vigilance be exercised over buyers as well as over dealers. Notwithstanding what has been done to check the trade, it is certain that advantage is at once taken of the least relaxation in the measures heretofore adopted to prevent the introduction and the sale of slaves in Egypt, to smuggle in slaves from Tripoli or Bengazi, and dispose of them generally in out-of-the-way places where detection is difficult."-Report of Lord Cromer on Slavery in Egypt (vide Blue Book, Egypt, No. 1, 1894), quoted in The Anti-Slavery Reporter, March-April, 1894, p. 96.

2 The Anti-Slavery Reporter, July, 1894, p. 208.

recent campaign upon the northern and eastern borders of the Congo State was conducted. Germany, England, and France have responded to the sentiment embodied in the Brussels Act, and have throttled the giant evil here and there throughout their vast possessions and spheres of influence in Africa; yet the testimony of travellers who have penetrated the interior, of missionaries in various parts of the Continent, and especially the recent report of Mr. Donald Mackenzie, who in 1895 visited the East Coast of Africa from Suakin to Zanzibar as a special Commissioner of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, leave no room for doubt that the slave-trade is still a grim reality in Africa. Such is also the testimony of Mr. Heli Chatelain, who has resided for many years in West Africa, and who has been instrumental in organizing the "Philafrican Liberators' League" in the United States, for the purpose of establishing colonies in Africa, according to the suggestion of the Brussels Act, for the protection and industrial training of liberated slaves.1

Slave-markets for intertribal trade are scattered along the West Coast. In Yorubaland young children are driven like sheep to be sold in the shambles.3 In a recent volume on Hausaland, by Charles H. Robinson, M.A., startling statements are made concerning the extent and cruelty of the slave-traffic in the Hausa States and throughout the Western Soudan. His description of the slave-market at Kano, of the slave-raiding throughout that section of Africa, and of the singular custom of using slaves as currency, indicates that this region, although nominally under English supervision, through the Royal Niger Company, is cursed by the most abandoned and heartless species of slave-raiding and slave-trading. In the market at Kano there is an average of about five hundred human beings daily on sale. It appears, in fact, that about every important town in the Hausa States possesses a slave-market. The tribute paid by the smaller States to the larger

1 Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, No. 1, 1896, p. 70; “ Africa and the American Negro" (Addresses at Atlanta Congress on Africa), pp. 103–112. 2 The Missionary Record, January, 1895, p. 13.

3 "As the day cooled again we passed through the lonely though well-cultivated farms of Shobakia, Egbade, and Olipin. In the midst of them we saw a sight of saddening interest. It was a company of about thirty small children, ranging from seven to twelve years, who were being driven like a drove of sheep to Abeokuta. They came from the interior, and the next day would be sold in the market at Abeokuta. The sight was sad, but it is all too common. The reason that children and not men and women are more numerously for sale is that now men and women soon run away, while children can be retained for at least a few years."-Rev. Bryan Roe, in Work and Workers in the Mission Field, January, 1896, p. 14.

consists usually of slaves. The Sultan of Sokoto receives a small army of them every year as his annual tribute. Mr. Robinson declares that "one out of every three hundred persons now living in the world is a Hausa-speaking slave," and justifies the statement upon the basis of a Hausa-speaking population of fifteen millions, or one per cent. of the world's inhabitants. As he regards it as beyond question that at least one third of these are in a state of slavery, this would result in one Hausa-speaking slave to every three hundred of the world's population.1

In "Fire and Sword in the Sudan," by Slatin Pasha, translated by Major Wingate, is another harrowing account of slavery and the slavetrade in the Soudan, chiefly in the eastern section. His descriptions of the desert slave-routes, and how women and girls are treated, present records of cruelty which are almost too appalling to quote.2

The existence of slave-markets in Morocco, supplied by transportation across the Sahara from the Western Soudan and the regions of the Upper Niger, is confirmed by abundant testimony.3 Mr. Henry Gur

1 Robinson, "Hausaland," quoted in The Anti-Slavery Reporter, January-February, 1896, pp. 62, 63. [A decree issued March 6, 1897, by Sir George Goldie, abolishes slavery in all the territories of the Royal Niger Company after June 19th.] 2 The Anti-Slavery Reporter, January-February, 1896, pp. 55-57.

3 In a communication on this subject, a member of the North Africa Mission says:

'Few people know the true state of affairs in Morocco; only those who live in daily touch with the common life of the people really get to understand the pernicious and soul-destroying system of human flesh-traffic, as carried on in most of the public markets of the interior. Having resided and travelled extensively in Morocco for some seven years, I feel constrained to bear witness against the whole gang of Arab slave-raiders and buyers of poor little innocent boys and girls.

"When I first settled in Morocco I met those who denied the existence of slavemarkets, but since that time I have seen children, some of whom were of tender years, as well as very pretty young women, openly sold in the City of Morocco, and in the towns along the Atlantic seaboard. It is also of very frequent occurrence to see slaves sold in Fez, the capital of Northern Morocco.

"The first slave-girls that I actually saw being sold were of various ages. They had just arrived from the Soudan, a distance by camel, perhaps, of forty days' journey. Two swarthy-looking men were in charge of them. The timid little creatures, mute as touching Arabic, for they had not yet learned to speak in that tongue, were pushed out by their captors from a horribly dark and noisome dungeon into which they had been thrust the night before. Then, separately, or two by two, they were paraded up and down before the public gaze, being stopped now and again by some one of the spectators and examined exactly as the horse-dealer would examine the points of a horse before buying the animal at any of our public horse-marts in England. The sight was sickening. Some of the girls were terrified, others were silent and sad. Every movement was watched by the captives, anxious to know their pres

and North Africa.

ney assures us that he himself visited slave-markets in Morocco City and Fez, in 1894.1 Substantially the same information is given by correspondents who accompanied the Embassy of The traffic in Morocco Marshal Martinez Campos to the Court of Morocco, who report the sale of slaves within view of the Imperial Palace, and by Luis Morote in a communication to the Spanish Anti-Slavery Society, describing the slave-markets in Morocco City, after a visit to Morocco in the winter of 1893-94.2 Mr. Morote speaks of the horrors of the slave-raids and the long caravan journeys across the trackless desert from Timbuctoo or the far Soudan. A correspondent of The New York Tribune, in a letter from Mogador, quoted in Illustrated Africa, November, 1895, p. 11, declares that the trade has never been so thriving and prosperous as it is at present. There is also a restricted traffic through the ports of Tripoli, although carried on under the cover of various disguises, since by treaty with England the slave-trade in that province is illegal.3 In Egypt the trade is happily under strict espionage, and at Cairo a home for freed women slaves has been established, where in 1895 seventy-one were received; but of these only three were found to have been imported. recently from outside, and the remainder were domestic slaves who had been set free. The English Government has established stations in the Nile Valley for watching the traffic, and along the Red Sea coast north of Suakin a camel corps is constantly patrolling to detect any signs either of export or import. Unfortunately, south of Suakin the Red Sea coast is practically unguarded, and the slaver still finds in that section an outlet for his chattel.

The Red Sea coast from Suakin southward to the Strait of Bab-elMandeb, and the entire coast-line around Cape Guardafui to Zanzibar, ent fate. My own face flushed with anger as I stood helplessly by and saw those sweet, dark-skinned, woolly-headed Soudanese sold into slavery.

"Our hearts have ached as we have heard from time to time from the lips of slaves of the indescribable horrors of the journey across desert plains, cramped with pain, parched with thirst, and suffocated in panniers, their food a handful of maize. Again, we have sickened at the sight of murdered corpses, left by the wayside to the vulture and the burning rays of the African sun, and we have prayed, perhaps as never before, to the God of justice to stop these cruel practices."— The Anti-Slavery Reporter, December, 1895, pp. 267-268.

1 Ibid., May-June, 1894, p. 181; January-May, 1895, p. 63.

2 Ibid., July-August, 1894, p. 207. Cf. also Bonsal, "Morocco as It Is," pp. 328-334.

3 The Anti-Slavery Reporter, January-February, 1894, p. 9; January-May, 1895,

P. 10.

4 Letter of Lord Cromer, quoted in The Anti-Slavery Reporter, March-April, 1896, p. 118.