Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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A Part Of The Great Square Is Surrounded With Arcades,
Above Which Is One Of Those Long Wooden Galleries, Common In Warm
Countries.
This was the place where slaves, brought from the coast
of Africa, were sold.
Of all the European governments Denmark was
the first, and for a long time the only power, which abolished the
traffic; yet notwithstanding that fact, the first negroes we saw
exposed for sale had been landed from a Danish slave-ship. What are
the duties of humanity, national honour, or the laws of their
country, to men stimulated by the speculations of sordid interest?
The slaves exposed to sale were young men from fifteen to twenty
years of age. Every morning cocoa-nut oil was distributed among
them, with which they rubbed their bodies, to give their skin a
black polish. The persons who came to purchase examined the teeth
of these slaves, to judge of their age and health; forcing open
their mouths as we do those of horses in a market. This odious
custom dates from Africa, as is proved by the faithful pictures
drawn by the inimitable Cervantes,* who after his long captivity
among the Moors, described the sale of Christian slaves at Algiers.
(* El Trato de Argel. Jorn. 2 Viage al Parnasso 1784 page 316.) It
is distressing to think that even at this day there exist European
colonists in the West Indies who mark their slaves with a hot iron,
to know them again if they escape. This is the treatment bestowed
on those "who save other men the labour of sowing, tilling, and
reaping."* (* La Bruyere Caracteres edition 1765 chapter 11 page
300.
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