THE GREAT SLAVE QUESTION. vals

which I have seen are not densely peopled. . . . . Wemust have caught 2,000 in less than nine months, and I expect we did not catch one-fifth of the caravans. Again, how many died en route? The Slaves are most undemonstra- tive. They make no signs of joy at being released. I suppose the long marches have taken all the life out of them.”

Notwithstanding the splendid efforts of Sir Samuel Baker in -his campaign against the Slave-dealers, and of the five years’ heroic and stupendous struggle of Colonel Gordon, this modern Hercules had reluctantly to confess that he had not succeeded in thoroughly cleans- ing the great Augean stable of the man-stealers. It is heart-breaking

to read the following passages, amongst many others, in his. reports, on the condition of that plague-stricken country. Moreover, he knew that when his back was turned the desolating scourge would once

. more spread over the land.

There is no radical cure for the Slave-trade but by putting down the Slave-markets of Egypt and Turkey. Not the open markets— these have been closed long ago, as a sop to Europe—but those secret and unclean dens where human flesh is bought and sold—the flesh of high-priced fair Circassian women for the harems of rich Pashas, and

that of the less valued ebony-skinned sons and daughters of Africa, who have been torn from their far-distant homes, and dragged in chains across thirsty deserts, to be sold at so much per head for domestic service or for the Egyptian army.

Tue GREAT SLAVE QUESTION IN 1879, arrER Five YEARS or LABOUR.

‘* All the road from here to Shaka is marked by the camping-places of the slave-dealers ; and there are numerous skulls by the side ef the road. What thousands have passed along here! ... I hear some districts are completely depopulated, all the inhabitants having been captured or starved to death. If our Government, instead of bothering the Khedive about that wretched debt, had spent £1,000 a year in sending up a consul here, what a deal of suffering might have been saved! . . . As for.slaves, 1am sick of them, and hope soon to see the last of them; poor creatures! Iam sorry I can’t take them back to their own countries, but it is impossible to do so. . . . There must have been over 1,000 slaves in this den, and yet the slave-dealers had had warning of my approach; and at least as many as 500 must have got away from me. The Bedouin Arabs are up all over the country ; and so are the black tribes, I hear, at Bahr Gazelle. We have got at the heart of them this time. But for how many years has this been going on?

‘Just as I wrote this I heard a very great tumult going on among the Arabs ; and I feared a fight. However, it turned out to be caused by the division of the slaves among the tribes ; and now the country is covered by strings of slaves going off in all directions with their new owners. The ostriches are running all about, and do not know what to make of their liberty. What a terrible time of it these poor, patient slaves have had for the last three days—hurried on all

sides, and forced first one day’s march in one direction, and then off again in another. It appears that the slaves were not divided, but were scrambled for.