294 COMMERCE.

fan of captive parents are generally of the highest price, because already accustomed to some species of work and more especially because acquainted with the Arabic language, for the owner of a married slave, or of a girl who brings a child into the world, is at the same time proprietor of the latter, and is permitted to sell it ; masters even who have children by their female slaves may dispose of their offspring, and examples of this unnatural proceeding are by no means uncommon. In short whatever is considered most cruel and revolting by all civilized nations, is treated with the utmost levity in this country, so that it is, indeed, impossible to find words to give full vent to your feelings of indignation and horror.

The human being, deprived of his liberty, is here regarded as a commodity, or ready money, passes from hand to hand as in circulation or in commerce, and must think himself fortunate if he ultimately chance to become the denizen of a house where he may find rest for the sole of his foot, or may reckon on the treatment due to him as a portion of humanity. No single house is to be found among the more opulent part of the community which is not provided at least with one slave, either male or female, for the performance of the menial offices, for it is, as it were, comme il faut to fill the house with captives, and to keep a separate slave appropriated to each separate office.

The greater number, however, is hence exported, in larger or smaller convoys, to Egypt and the Levant.