Slavery and the Slave-Trade in Shoa.

The annals of slavery point clearly to war as the principal cause of the monstrous crime of selling our fellow-creatures like cattle in the market. One nation having taken from another a greater number of captives than could be exchanged on equal terms, it is easy to comprehend how the victors, finding the maintenance of their prisoners expensive and inconvenient, first compelled them to work for their daily bread. Emerged from the limited wants of savage life, man next saw productions of art, which he eagerly coveted; and lacking habits of industry by which to earn them for himself, he compelled all whom his superiority enabled him to bring under subjection to pass their lives in labouring for his advantage.

In Africa especially, where the human passions are unbridled, and man emulates the ferocity of the beast of prey, war proves a never-drying spring of misery and bondage, and slavery is the inevitable lot of all who are not slain on the battlefield, or massacred in the sacking of towns and villages. The weak and unsuccessful warrior, who sues for mercy beneath the uplifted spear of his opponent, purchases existence at the expense of liberty; and in time of famine the freeman often becomes a voluntary slave, in order to avoid the greater calamity of inevitable starvation. By the philosophic and reflecting mind death would doubtless be esteemed the lighter evil of the two, but the untutored savage, fainting with hunger, thinks with Esau of old, “Behold, I am at the point to die—what profit shall this birthright do to me?”

Crime, necessity, insolvency, the inhumanity of a harsh creditor, a spirit of retaliation in petty disputes, and the sordid love of gain, for which parents will even sell their own children, severally assist in feeding the demand for slaves—the law of every African state either tolerating or directly sanctioning the evil; and wherever the Mohammadan faith prevails, frequent predatory incursions, characterised by the most atrocious violence, are made into the territories of all neighbouring infidels, who are systematically hunted down and entrapped as a religious duty.

Slaves in Africa are thus in proportion to the freemen of about three to one; but although the number of individuals reduced to a state of bondage by the operation of the above causes, and the destruction created, both as regards life and property, is immense, the whole combined are but as a single grain of dust in the balance, when compared with the slavery, the destitution, and the desolation, that is daily entailed by the unceasing bloody struggles betwixt state and state. Towns and villages are then obliterated from the face of the earth, and thousands upon thousands of the population, of whatever age or sex, are hurried into hopeless captivity.

In a country reft into ten thousand petty governments, the majority of which are independent and jealous one of the other; where every freeman, inured to arms from the first hour that he is capable of bearing them, pants for an opportunity of displaying his valour in the field; where the cherished recollection of hereditary feuds; the love of plunder inherent in every savage breast, and the bigoted zeal of religious enthusiasts, all conspire to afford hourly pretexts for war—the sword of desolation is never suffered to rust within the scabbard. The fact of one nation being stronger than another is even sufficient; and whilst hostilities, originating frequently in the most frivolous provocations, are prosecuted with relentless fury, robbery on a great and national scale, forming one of the chief features of African character, is almost universally prevalent. Here it is perpetrated by no concealed or proscribed ruffian; neither is it limited to those poorer tribes who are exposed to the temptation of rich caravans skirting their borders in progress to distant lands. Each needy soldier seeks with his sword to redress the unequal distribution made by the hand of fortune. The most distinguished warrior chieftains consider it a glory to place themselves at the head of an expedition undertaken solely for purposes of plunder; and the crime of stealing human beings in order to sell them into foreign markets, which, with all its attendant cruelty, is so widely practised throughout the benighted continent, is one in which the greatest of her sovereigns do not hesitate to participate.

The following narrative by a native of the village of Súppa, in Enárea, detailing the history of his capture and subsequent vicissitudes, may be taken as a fair specimen of the usual circumstances attending the transfer of the kidnapped victim from one merciless dealer to another, in his progress to Abyssinia through the interior provinces which form the focus of slavery in the north-east.

“When twenty years of age, whilst tending my father’s flocks, an armed band of the Ooma Galla, with whom my tribe had long been in enmity, swept suddenly down, and took myself with six other youths prisoners, killing four more who resisted. Having been kept bound hand and foot during five days, I was sold to the Toomee Galla, one of the nearest tribes, for thirty ámoles (about six shillings and three-pence sterling). The bargain was concluded in the Toomee market-place, which is called Sundáffo, where, in consequence of the dearness of salt, two male slaves are commonly bought for one dollar; and after nightfall, the Mohammadan rover by whom I had been purchased, came and took me away.

“Having been kept bound in his house another week, I was taken two days’ journey with a large slave Caravan, and sold privately to the Nono Galla for a few ells of blue calico. My companions in captivity were assorted according to their age and size, and walked in double file, the stout and able-bodied only, whereof I was one, having their hands tied behind them. In Meegra, the market-place of the Nono, I was, after six weeks’ confinement, sold by public auction to the Gumbitchu Galla for forty pieces of salt (value eight shillings and fourpence). Thence I was taken to the market-place which is beyond Sequala, on the plain of the Háwash, and sold for seventy pieces of salt to the Soddo Galla, and immediately afterwards to Roqué, the great slave-mart in the Yerrur district, where I was sold for one hundred ámoles” being one pound sterling.

“From Roqué I was driven to Alio Amba, in Shoa, where a Mohammadan subject of Sáhela Selássie purchased me in the market of Abd el Russool for twelve dollars; but after three months, my master falling into disgrace, the whole of his property was confiscated, and I became the slave of the Negoos, which I still am, although permitted to reside with my family, and only called upon to plough, reap, and carry wood. Exclusive of halts, the journey from my native village occupied fifteen days. I was tolerably fed, and not maltreated. All the merchants through whose hands I passed were Mohammadans; and until within a few stages of Alio Amba, I was invariably bound at night, and thus found no opportunity to escape. Prior to my own enslavement, I had been extensively engaged as a kidnapper, and in this capacity had made party in three great slave hunts into the country of the Doko negroes beyond C&aacut............