Introduction of Slavery into Abyssinia.

Although the history of North-eastern Africa is very imperfectly recorded, it is certain that Carthage, Egypt, and Ethiopia, early acquired and long maintained a prevailing influence therein. The Carthaginians possessed themselves of nearly the whole of the northern portion, whilst the Egyptians and Ethiopians occupied the east to the very centre. The extension of these great empires tended considerably to limit the trade in human flesh, and the world being in feud in every quarter, needed not to be supplied with slaves from Africa.

But this aspect of affairs was materially altered so soon as these three empires, losing their power, became subdivided into sundry governments, the diffusion of Christianity and civilisation in Europe and Asia meanwhile restricting the slave-trade to the African continent. Although not generally representing the character which their name implies, the Christians of the Occident and Orient had at least given up the system amongst themselves; and by the former especially it was very little practised until after the discovery of America, when it was revived and encouraged by the Spaniards; and the Negro being considered better fitted for hard labour than the aborigines of the New World, Africa began to be regarded as the slave-mart for the whole universe. About the same period Ethiopia was first invaded by numberless hordes of Pagan Galla, migrating from the south; and not long afterwards Graan, the fanatic Mohammadan enemy, commenced the overthrow of this then powerful empire, which was speedily dismembered, and has never since been able to regain its former limits.

The heathen intruders soon relaxing in their united efforts against the Christians, those Galla tribes which had settled on Abyssinian ground began to contest among themselves for the supremacy over the newly-acquired territory, and to enslave each other. The Mohammadans, who had meanwhile gained a footing in the disturbed country, being slave-dealers by profession, greedily availed themselves of the opportunity afforded by these intestine divisions to trade in Pagan prisoners, females especially, who possess the recommendation of superior personal attractions to the generality of “Afric’s dark daughters”—and thus the traffic spread rapidly around Abyssinia. Partly from fear of then enemies, and partly from being less interested in slavery than the Moslems, the Christians no longer ventured beyond the frontiers of the country they retained, and the avenues to the sea-coast, as well as those through the Galla tribes in the interior, thus fell together with the whole commerce into the hands of the bigoted disciples of the Prophet. They devoted their lives to the purchase and sale of human flesh, a trade with which they connected the propagation of their faith, and their market was ever supplied by the out-pouring of innumerable prisoners of war from the distant nations of the interior.

The origin of the slave-trade in these quarters may thus be referred to the commencement of hostilities therein, and to the presence of Mohammadans, by whom it was fostered and encouraged. Grain and cattle excepted, the wild and greedy Galla possessed not a single commodity to barter for the alluring foreign wares exhibited by the rover, but his captured foe presented the ready means of supplying whatsoever he coveted. The empire of Abyssinia being dismembered and enfeebled by the tide of invasion, its rulers, far from seeking to crush the hostilities that prevailed among the Gentiles, naturally rejoiced to see intestine feuds raging throughout a nation, which, if united, could have swept away the small remnant of Ethiopic power, once so predominant.

The Christians, moreover, had become so corrupted by evil example, that, in lieu of opposing a barrier to the advance of slavery, they shortly adopted and encouraged the debasing traffic. Those provinces especially which were separated from the principal seat of government not only afforded a market to numbers of Pagan prisoners, but extended to the dealer in slaves a safe road by which thousands were annually exported to Arabia; and Shoa, Efát, Guráguê, and Cambát, the southernmost provinces of Abyssinia, having more especially suffered at the hands of the Galla hordes, it is not difficult to understand how, in a confused political and ecclesiastical state of things, the detestation entertained towards their heathen persecutors prompted the population to purchase as drudges those of their enemies who had been captured in war.

When the rulers of Shoa began to extend their dominions, and to subdue the nearer tribes of Galla invaders, Christianity was propagated by the sword; but the Mohammadan traders, far from being checked or arrested in their dealings, were only induced to extend their traffic to more remote regions of north-eastern Africa. Instead of purchasing slaves at Ankóber, as had been their wont when that capital was still in Pagan hands, they were compelled, after its recapture, to seek their victims in Guráguê, and beyond. Those provinces of Abyssinia wherein the seat of government was established after the demolition of the Ethiopic empire, preserved more or less of their ancient customs, which sanctioned the enslavement of a captured enemy for the term of seven years, according to the Mosaic law; and the practice is to the present day retained in Gojam and Tigré—the inhabitants of these states neither buying nor selling slaves, but consigning to a few years of bondage all prisoners from the wild tribes of Shankela taken in war.

The enslavement of this heathen people, who are often barbarously hunted down for sport, is defended upon the grounds that so fierce, swarthy, and bestial a race, existing in the rudest possible form of savage state, must be the accursed of mankind, and entirely beyond the pale of natural rights. But the Christians of Western and Northern Abyssinia condemn this opinion of their brethren in the south and east; and Tekla Georgis, the late emperor of Gondar, having catechised a number of Shoan ecclesiastics as to the ............