Page:A Chapter on Slavery.djvu/71

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SLAVERY IN AFRICA.
57

— and the severe flogging he was subjected to, for the attempt to recover his liberty. We have, also, pictures of the internal slave-trade in Africa — its universal prevalence, and the distresses and sufferings with which it is accompanied. We behold the poor slaves, many of them women, yoked together by the neck, setting out on their terrible journey across the Great Desert, — the' skeletons of hundreds who have preceded them lying in their path. We see, too, the awful ravages‘ and desolations inflicted by the King of Bornou and other negro chiefs, to procure these slaves, setting peaceful villages on fire, putting to death the old and infirm, and carrying off the young into hopeless slavery. Again, we see others, taken prisoners in war, lying for years in. chains in prison, and then taken out to be sent up the Niger, to be-sold as slaves at the various towns along its banks; and the remainder, not thus sold, sent off on a painful march to the distant Western Coast. In a word, we find here a complete state of slavery, with all its usual concomitants, "regular slave-markets," negro slave merchants (slatees), bad treatment, semi-starvation, suffering in all forms. And withal, we have the painful thought that all this suffering is continually inflicted on such a vast number of human beings — probably upwards of one hundred millions — and that this course of things has been going on now for ages!

And where, now, is the remedy? In the ordinary course of things, none — none probable — none seemingly possible. Slavery under Europeans, or their descendants in the New World, slavery in Christian lands,