SLAVE-RAIDING 41S claimed one-third. There remained 2000 slaves and about 7000 head of cattle to divide between the 20,000 persons who had composed the expedition. That is to say, that if the spoil was evenly divided, each man would receive the tenth part of a slave and the third part of a bullock as his individual share. That such waste of life, destruction of property, and loss of time could be considered, even from the purely practical point of view, to be compensated by such poor results, is indication enough of how little all these things are valued among races where practices of this kind are countenanced.

I have quoted the account of this raid at some length, for, as it happened to be accompanied by two trustworthy Europeans, the details may be accepted as correct, and the incidents, though varying, no doubt, on every occasion, are typical enough to illustrate vividly the absolute incompatibility of slave-raiding with the maintenance of civilised government in the country raided. The more cultivated nations of West Africa, though tolerant of the practice of slave-raiding in the territory of their pagan neighbours, never, of course, permitted such a practice in what may be called the home territories. It was only in the decadence and feebleness of a multiplication of petty monarchs that the custom of raiding within the narrow limits of individual provinces became general, and it Is hardly necessary to say that where it prevails neither order, security, nor prosperity are in an even moderate desree attainable.

Between the date of 1851 and the year of the introduction of British authority into Northern Nigeria, the practice of slave-raiding as described by Dr. Barth had become general throughout the Protectorate. It has already been said that the feoff-holders of the Fulani emirates resorted at times to the expedient of selling their own peasantry, and there was no province of which the entire territory could be said to be free from the curse of the slave-raid.

It will be easily understood that, however broken