Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1895 — Curious Slave Laws. [ARTICLE]

Curious Slave Laws.

In the Soudan,according to a traveler who recently returned from that country, a slave who considers himself ill-treated has a right, not to freedom, indeod, but to select a master more to his liking. To be safe from recapture and punishment, the bondsman has only to escape from his old homo by night, go immediately to the house of any man to whom he chooses to belong, and, arriving there, snip a bit of cartilage from the ear of its sleeping proprietor. That accomplished, the matter is settled; neither the old nor the new master can question the transaction’s legality or binding force. The traveler reports that he saw several men in the Soudan whose ears had almost disappeired, so often had the discontented slaves of others thus disturbed tliei: slumbers.