They are yoked together by a long pole, and marched off from their homes forever. One-third of them may have the small-pox; and then with this infected cargo the trader proceeds to his nearest station.
Thence the Negroes are clandestinely sent across the desert to Kordofan, whence, they are dispersed over Lower Egypt and other markets. It not unfrequently happens that the Negroes succeed in killing their adversaries in these combats. But the blacks here are not brave. They generally fly after a loss of several killed, except with the Neam-Neams, who always fight with a bravery commensurate with their renown as cannibals.
The statistics of the slave-trade are difficult to obtain with absolute accuracy, but an adequate approximation may be reached. It is safe to say that the annual export of slaves from the country lying between the Red Sea and the Great Desert is twenty-five thousand a year, distributed as follows: From Abyssinia, carried to Jaffa or Gallabat, ten thousand; issuing by other routes of Abyssinia, five thousand; by the Blue Nile, three thousand; by the White Nile, seven thousand. To obtain these twenty-five thousand slaves and sell them in market, more than fifteen thousand are annually killed, and often the mortality reaches the terrible figure of fifty thousand. It is a fair estimate that fifty thousand children are stolen from their parents every year. Of the number forced into slavery, fifteen thousand being boys and ten thousand girls, it is found that about six thousand go to Lower Egypt, two thousand are made soldiers, nine thousand concubines, five hundred eunuchs, five thousand cooks or servants, while ten thousand eventually die from
