and tortured to no purpose, and then left in charge of another slave, who, it was generally believed, put him to death.

It appears that there is also great suffering when these poor victims are conveyed to the coast, by the rivers. Falconbridge says, "While I was on the coast, during one of the voyages I made, the black traders brought down in different canoes from 1200 to 1500 negroes, which had been purchased at one fair." They consisted of all ages. Women sometimes form a part of them who happen to be so far advanced in their pregnancy as to be delivered during their journey from the fairs to the coast. And there is not the least room to doubt, but that, even before they can reach the fairs, great numbers perish from cruel usage, want of food, traveling through inhospitable deserts, &c. They are brought in canoes, at the bottom of which they lie, having their hands tied, and a strict watch is kept over them. Their usage, in other respects, during the passage, is equally cruel. Their allowance of food is so scanty as barely to support nature. They are, besides, much exposed to the violent rains which frequently fall here, being covered only with mats that afford but a slight defence; and, as there is usually water at the bottom of canoes, from leaking, they are scarcely ever dry."*

Here, again, it may be rejoined, "But these were the practices of the last century." Riley informs us that Sidi Hamet, the Moor, narrated to him, as an instance of the sufferings consequent on the route by the Desert, that the caravan which he accompanied

* Falconbridge on the Slave Trade. London, 1788, pp. 12, 13, 19, &c.

from Wednoon to Timbuctoo, in 1807, consisted on its setting out of 1000 men and 4000 camels; but only twelve camels and twenty-one men escaped alive from the Desert.* Let us examine whether these cruel sufferings have been mitigated in our own times; and whether we may flatter ourselves that Africa is no longer the scene of such atrocities. Burckhardt, in 1814, accompanied a caravan from Shendy in Nubia, across the Desert, to Suakin on the Red Sea. There were slaves with the caravan on their way to Arabia. In the middle of the journey the caravan was alarmed by a threatened attack of robbers; they "moved on," we are told, "in silence nothing was heard but the groans of a few infirm female slaves, and the whips of their cruel masters."† He also says that the females are almost universally the victims of the brutal lusts of their drivers.

Major Gray, while traveling in the country of Galem in 1821, fell in with a part of the Kaartan force, which he said had taken 107 prisoners, chiefly women and children. "The men were tied in pairs by the necks, their hands secured behind their backs; the women by their necks only, but their hands were not left free from any sense of feeling for them, but in order to enable them to balance the immense loads of pang, corn, or rice, which they were forced to carry on their heads, and the children (who were unable to walk, or sit on horseback) behind their backs. They were hurried along at a pace little short of running, to enable them to keep up with the horsemen, who drove them on as Smithfield drovers do fatigued bullocks. Many of the women were old, and by no means able to endure such treatment." On a subsequent day he says, "The sufferings of the poor slaves during a march of nearly eight hours, partly under an excessive hot sun and east wind, heavily laden with water, of which they were allowed to drink but very sparingly, and traveling bare foot on a hard and broken soil, covered with long dried reeds, and thorny underwood, may be more easily conceived than described."

In the course of his journey Major Gray fell in with another detachment of slaves, and he says, "The women and children (all nearly naked, and carrying heavy loads) were tied together by the neck, and hurried along over a rough stony path, and cut their feet in a dreadful manner. There were a great number of children, who, from their tender years were unable to walk; and were carried, some on the prisoners' backs, and others on horseback behind the captors, who, to prevent their falling off, tied them to the back part of the saddle with a rope made from the bark of the baoball, which was so hard and rough that it cut the back and sides of the poor little innocent babes, so as to draw the blood. This, howevet was only a secondary state of the sufferings endured by those children, when compared to the dreadfully blistered and chafed state of their seats, from constant jolting on the bare back of the horse, seldom going slower than a trot, or smart amble, and not unfrequently driven at full speed for a few yards, and pulled up short."*

In speaking of the route by the Desert, Lyon

• Gray's Travels in Africa, pp. 290, 295, and 323.

says:*" Children are thrown with the baggage on the camels, if unable to walk; but, if five or six years of age, the poor little creatures are obliged to trot on all day, even should no stop be made for fourteen or fifteen hours, as I have sometimes witnessed." "The daily allowance of food is a quart of dates in the morning, and half a pint of flour, made into bazeen, at night. Some masters never allow their slaves to drink after a meal, except at a wateringplace." "None of the owners ever moved without their whips, which were in constant use. Drinking too much water, bringing too little wood, or falling asleep before the cooking was finished, were considered nearly capital crimes; and it was in vain for these poor creatures to plead the excuse of being tired, nothing could avert the application of the whip." "No slave dares to be ill or unable no walk; but, when the poor sufferer dies, the master suspects there must have been something 'wrong inside,' and regrets not having liberally applied the usual remedy of burning the belly with a red-hot iron; thus reconciling themselves to their cruel treatment of these unfortunate wretches."

This description is confirmed by Caillie, who, in his account of his journey from Timbuctoo through the Desert, gives the following case of barbarity, which he says he had the misfortune to see too often repeated: - "A poor Bambara slave of twenty-five years was cruelly treated by some Moors, who compelled him to walk, without allowing him to halt for a moment, or to quench his burning thirst. The complaints of this unfortunate creature might have

moved the hardest heart. Sometimes he would beg to rest himself against the crupper of a camel; and at others he threw himself down on the sand in despair. In vain did he implore, with uplifted hands, a drop of water; his cruel master answered his prayers and his tears only with stripes.”*

In another part of his work Caillie says

"Our situation was still the same ; the east wind blew with violence; and, far from affording us any refreshment, it only threatened to bury us under the mountains of sand which it raised; and, what was still more alarming, our water diminished rapidly from the extreme drought which it occasioned. Nobody suffered more intensely from thirst than the poor little slaves, who were crying for water. Exhausted by their sufferings and their lamentations, these unhappy creatures fell on the ground, and seemed to have no power to rise; but the Moors did not suffer them to continue there long when traveling. Insensible to the sufferings which childhood is so little fitted to support, these barbarians dragged them along with violence, beating them incessantly till they had overtaken the camels, which were already at a distance."†

In 1824, Denham and Clapperton penetrated to Nigritia by the Desert from Fezzan, the route usually taken by slave-caravans going to the north of Africa. In narrating his excursion to Munga, Major Denham speaks of a caravan which he met at Kouka, consisting of ten merchants from Soudan with nearly 100 slaves, and he observes, "If the hundreds, nay thou

* Caillie's Travels, vol. ii. p. 89.
† Cailie's Travels, vol. ii. p. 114.

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