l portion arrive at their
destination, some are exported, it may be to Cuba, it may be to
Madagascar; others to the Arab or Turkish provinces of Asia, to Mecca,
or to Muscat. The English and French cruisers can only prevent
this traffic to a small extent, as it is so difficult to obtain an
effective surveillance over such far-extended coasts.
But the figures of these odious exportations, are they still
considerable?
Yes! The number of slaves who arrive at the coast is estimated at
not less than eighty thousand; and this number, it appears, only
represents the tenth of natives massacred.
After these dreadful butcheries the devastated fields are deserted,
the burnt villages are without inhabitants, the rivers carry down dead
bodies, deer occupy the country. Livingstone, the day after one of
these men-hunts, no longer recognized the provinces he had visited
a few months before. All the other travelers--Grant, Speke, Burton,
Cameron, and Stanley--do not speak otherwise of this wooded plateau of
Central Africa, the principal theater of the wars between the chiefs.
In the region of the great lakes, over all that vast country which
feeds the market of Zanzibar, in Bornou and Fezzan, farther south,
on the banks of the Nyassa and the Zambesi, farther west, in the
districts of the upper Zaire, which the daring Stanley has just
crossed, is seen the same spectacle--ruins, massacres, depopulation.
Then will slavery in Africa only end with the disappearance of the
black race; and will it be with this race as it is with the Australian
race, or the race in New Holland?
But the market of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies will close some
day. That outlet will be wanting. Civilized nations can no longer
tolerate the slave trade!
Yes, without doubt; and this year even, 1878, ought to see the
enfranchisement of all the slaves still possessed by Christian States.
However, for long years to come the Mussulman nations will maintain
this traffic, which depopulates the African continent. It is for them,
in fact, that the most important emigration of the blacks is made, as
the number of natives snatched from their provinces and brought to
the eastern coast annually exceeds forty thousand. Long before the
expedition to Egypt the negroes of the Seunaar were sold by thousands
to the negroes of the Darfour, and reciprocally. General Bonaparte was
able to buy a pretty large number of these blacks, of whom he made
organized soldiers, like
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