Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 December 1872 — The African Slave Trade. [ARTICLE]

The African Slave Trade.

General Kiukitam, the English director of the army of the King of Abyssynia, has supplied to the London Daily Telegraph some valuable information respecting the traffic in slaves still carried on between the interior of Africa and the Turkish Empire. He says: , The Abyssinian Envoy estimates the number of slaves annually carried off from Africa to the Arab and Turkish markets at 80,000 to 90,900, These unhappy beings are taken away at ages ranging from seven or eight to sixteen years, older men and ''women being found more troublesome than valuable to the dealer They are brought down from the Centre of the continent and the j£gion of the White Nile to Kassaja, and are hurried on to the slave market at Metemmch, to be resold for shipment to Jcdda. Foreign Consuls at Khartoum check, so far as they possibly can, the passage of slaves down the Nile, while Sir Samuel Baker’s expedition has done much also to increase the difficulties which beset the transit of slaves across that route. The Shankelto country and that of Woolah Gallas are favorite grounds for thtr and infamous practice ofthe traffickers in human beings, these provinces being close to Bogos, through which, since the annexation by the Khedive, slaves can be safely passed to Massowah, thence to be shipped for the Arabian coast. Shankelto is a district bordering on Abyssinia proper, and is inhabited by a wandering tribe resembling Gypsies, who are regarded as the Abyssinia. Shankelto, according to (Skieral Kirkham, belongs of right to Abyssinia, and about eighteen months ago Prince Kassai had occasion to send down thither one of his Generals with a large force, completely'to devastate the country for the murders that were frequently done there on his merchants an,d priests—there being churches there for the baptism of the people. The following is the fashion in which the slave dealers capture their victims: They go into a village, take- with them silks, or beads, or bits of tin, and ornaments. They exchange these things for slaves, or whatever they can get. The merchants send the slaves quietly away

without much trouble, and eventually they are trained as Mussulmans. They are taken through Bogos to Massowah, and they are sent thence to Jedda,whence they are sent to Turkey by land. As for price, if a female be of copper oolor, and good features, she will bring as much as $l4O, or about £2B that is, at the market in Metemmeth. which is a wholesale market. The retail price is according to the state of the market to which they are first taken. When sold in the second market they vary in price. If a man took a fancy to a female slave, he would perhaps give SIOO more than another man. The Sbankeltos and Oallas are much sought after for their beauty, and for their superiority to the other tribes. A strong boy will sell for S9O or SIOO. The girls fetch more because they are wanted for the harem. Traders will take away girls when they can get them. When a chief makes war on another, he makes it an object to carry ofl as many girls as he can. He plunders the villages and carries off the younger natives and sells them, retaining the older ones to work as his slaves. These people are subject to the Abyssinian King, when he finds it necessary to chastise them for misdeeds; but, of course, when his troops leave, they are theirown masters again. These things occur in a part of Abyssinia which the King claims, but not among his Christian subjects. When asked if he believed that all the 80,000 or 90,000 annual captives were in the war and sold by the Chiefs who captured them to the traders, General Kirkham, in substance, answered: “You must understand that after Mr. Stanley returned from the discovery of Livingstonet%e brought much to light concerning the slave trade of East Africa. Dr. Livingstone had also informed the Foreign Office as to the slave trade going on in the interior. Her Majesty’s gunboats kept so close a watch that it was impossible to get slaves down to the coast direct; so they took them through to Bogos At the interview between the Sultan and Ismail Pasha, when the latter was made Khedive, an understanding was, I believe, come to respecting the slave trade. The Mussulmans of Turkey and Egypt smust hare a supply of slaves to do their work—for the real Turks will not do any menial service. These 80,000 or 90,000 slaves are imported and brought up to the Mohammedan faith, and employed m doing the dirty work. The slaves that are not taken in war are bartered for with peasants, who will steal and sell them. Suppose you are a slave merchant, and I know where there are three or four goodlooking girls—l steal them and sell them to you. One man, who may have children of his own, will go and steal the children of another person, as many as he may get. The trader has attendants with him, and mules and camels, and he knows how to get slaves and carry them off. The law is so strict that any man, whether a Christian or Mohammedan, found in Abyssinia selling a slave is hanged on the first tree, without judge or jury. Whoever catches him hangs him up, and there is ne more about it; and there he hangs until he falls away, piece by piece. So long as Bogcs was in the power of the King of Abyssinia they could not go that way. If they were stopped there they would have to take another and a dangerous road across the wilderness. They are cheeked, on the one hand, by the British guriboats ofl Zanzibar, and would be checked, on the other, in Bogos.”' »

If a slave-driver takes slaves from one village and carries them through another, the inhabitants- of the second village have generally no chance to rescue them, because the leader’s attendants are numerous and well-armed. A single leader will buy, according to his means, from fifty to sixty slaves, and bring them through the country in that way. They do not bring down many at once for fear a white man should see them and give information against them, and then they would be stopped—because Ismail Pasha has ordered ostensibly that the slave trade shall be put down. General Kirkham is unreservedly of the opinion that the Khedive secretly favors the slave trade, while outwardly disavowing it. The slaves are brought down to tne coast from the Woo lah Gallas country and the White Nile—about forty-eight or fifty days’ journey from the coast. The better portion are treated very well on the way by the slavedealers, because they will fetch a better price. If the slave is of the Nubian race, he has to do all the dirty work for the others; he is considered of an inferior class, and does not fetch so much as the copper-colored. The Nubians are a flatnosed, thick-lipped,and curly.haired people. Strong Nubian girls, for servants, bring more than the boys. The Gallas are of a reddish, copper color, some of them remarkable for beauty of form; and they fetch a very high price, when taken to Turkey, for the harem. These girls are taken so young that they hardly know their original country, and adopt the Mussulman faith. As to language, says General Kirkham, the trader speaks a kind of gibberish which the people understand. “Of course, he knows the country well. No trader from England could go through there. There are, I suppose, about ten language# in these countries, all mixed up together. The King of Abyssinia speaks five. Girls and boys, when they are taken away, do not offer to make any resistance; they do not know anything about it. There are no traditions in their villages as to children being taken off by slave dealers, or as to the inducements held out to them that they will be taken to a fine country where they can live at ease. Suppose I am one-of their own countrymens probably I have an enemy who has two or three children. Igo quietly and take these children and sell them to thte slave-dealer, and he sends them away; the children are lost, and there is no more about it. There is great jealousy and suspicion between household and household; and it is thus that these feuds and thefts arise.” General Kirkham expresses a hope that the publication of these facts, confirming those made by Livingstone, Baker, ana Stanley, may more urgently than ever direct public attention to the iniquitous Nile slave-trade.

—Mr. Blackmore, author of “Lorna Darne" and the “Maid of Sker,” two of the most successful of English romances, is a market gardener, and William Morris, the poet, is an upholsterer. —One of the buildings on Otis street, ) Boston, destroyed by the late great fire, was owned by Christine Nilsson, and was valued, according, to the assessor’s records, at ffil.OOO. * . —The wife of Jack Grant, Representative from Polk County in the Oregon Legislature, last yeauApt and trapped 358 squirrels. a?