Slaves
Are Imported Via Wadnoun From Timbuctoo And Soudan, And Even From The
Western Coast.
Negroes of the Timbuctoo market are more esteemed than
those of Guinea, being a stronger and more laborious race.
The common
price of a slave in Mogador is from 60 to 90 ducats; one day a beautiful
African girl, freshly exported from the interior, was sold for 160
ducats, or about L20 sterling. This is considered an extraordinary high
price.
Slaves are sold by criers about the streets in Morocco, and most towns,
and not in bazaars, as in the East. But the most remarkable feature of
slavery in this part of the world, is the Christian or European slavery
carried further south, in the regions extending on the line of coast
below Wadnoun, and the adjacent Sahara. Something like a regular system
of Christian slavery is there going on, whilst its head-quarters are not
more than five or six days' journey from this residence of the European
Consuls. This white slavery consists in seizing shipwrecked sailors,
numbers being fishermen from the Canary Islands. We know little about
these poor captives, although we are so near Wadnoun, and are
continually trading with Sous and this country. Mr. Davidson casually
mentions them in his journal.
It is a settled and religious practice of merchants to keep Europeans
ignorant of the south and the Desert; we only hear of these captives now
and then, when one escapes, and after being bought and sold by a hundred
different masters, is fortunate enough to be redeemed; of his companions
in shipwreck, the escaped captive rarely knows anything.
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