Still, After The First Qualms Have Worn Off, We Find
Him Much Attached To His Master, Who Feeds Him And Finds Him In
Clothes In Return For The Menial Services Which He Performs.
In
a few years after capture, or when confidence has been gained by
the attachment shown by the slave,
If the master is a trader in
ivory, he will intrust him with the charge of his stores, and
send him all over the interior of the continent to purchase for
him both slaves and ivory; but should the master die, according
to the Mohammedan creed the slaves ought to be freed. In Arabia
this would be the case; but at Zanzibar it more generally happens
that the slave is willed to his successor.
The whole system of slaveholding by the Arabs in Africa, or
rather on the coast or at Zanzibar, is exceedingly strange; for
the slaves, both in individual physical strength and in numbers,
are so superior to the Arab foreigners, that if they chose to
rebel, they might send the Arabs flying out of the land. It
happens, however, that they are spell-bound, not knowing their
strength any more than domestic animals, and they even seem to
consider that they would be dishonest if they ran away after
being purchased, and so brought pecuniary loss on their owners.
There are many positions into which the slave may get by the
course of events, and I shall give here, as a specimen, the
ordinary case of one who has been freed by the death of his
master, that master having been a trader in ivory and slaves in
the interior. In such a case, the slave so freed in all
probability would commence life afresh by taking service as a
porter with other merchants, and in the end would raise
sufficient capital to commence trading himself - first in slaves,
because they are the most easily got, and then in ivory. All his
accumulations would then go to the Zanzibar market, or else to
slavers looking out off the coast. Slavery begets slavery. To
catch slaves is the first thought of every chief in the interior;
hence fights and slavery impoverish the land, and that is the
reason both why Africa does not improve, and why we find men of
all tribes and tongues on the coast. The ethnologist need only
go to Zanzibar to become acquainted with all the different tribes
to the centre of the continent on that side, or to Congo to find
the other half south of the equator there.
Some few freed slaves take service in vessels, of which they are
especially fond; but most return to Africa to trade in slaves and
ivory. All slaves learn the coast language, called at Zanzibar
Kisuahili; and therefore the traveller, if judicious in his
selections, could find there interpreters to carry him throughout
the eastern half of South Africa. To the north of the equator
the system of language entirely changes.
Laziness is inherent in these men, for which reason, although
extremely powerful, they will not work unless compelled to do so.
Having no God, in the Christian sense of the term, to fear or
worship, they have no love for truth, honour, or honesty.
Controlled by no government, nor yet by home ties, they have no
reason to think of or look to the future.
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