The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 | Page 8

Tripoli and Egypt.
Daumas and his companion caravan of Tuat struck out to the northwest
for the oasis of Tuat.
Two thirds of the camels bought by Daumas in the Sudan died before
he reached "Isalab" (Ain Salah?), as they could not stand the hardship
of the journey, especially the chilly and damp nights of the desert.
Arriving at Metlily the Arab merchants repaired to a mosque and
thanked God for His protection.
III. REGION OF NORTHWEST AFRICA AND THE DESERT OF
SAHARA. HARDSHIP OF THE DESERT ROUTE
In 1850 Barth estimated the number of slaves carried across the desert

from Kuka at 5,000 per annum, and in 1865 Rohlfs estimated the
number at 10,000. A British Blue Book of 1873 estimated that the
Mohammedan States of North Africa absorbed annually one million
slaves.
The mortality in crossing the desert was frightful. Denham saw near a
well in the Tibbu country 100 skeletons of Negroes who had perished
from hunger and thirst. In his travels he saw a skeleton every few miles,
and for several days he passed from sixty to ninety skeletons per day.
Sometimes a whole caravan perished, consisting of as many as 2,000
persons and 1,800 camels. The Negroes composing the caravans often
had to walk and carry heavy loads. Rohlfs says that if one did not know
the route of their pilgrimage he could find the way by the bones that lie
to the right and left of the path. When he was passing through Murzuk
in 1865, he gave medical aid to a slave dealer who was very ill, and, in
compensation, received a boy about seven or eight years old. The boy
had traveled four months across the desert from Lake Chad. He knew
nothing of his home country, had even forgotten his mother tongue, and
could jabber only some fragments of speech picked up from the other
slaves of the caravan. As a result of the long journey he was emaciated
to a skeleton and so enfeebled that he could scarcely stand up. He
crawled on all fours and kissed the hand of his new master, and the first
words he uttered were "I am hungry." The boy prospered and followed
Rohlfs to Berlin. Thomson, in his travels, mentions having met a
caravan of forty slave-girls crossing the Atlas Mountains on its way to
Marocco. "A few were on camel-back, but most of them trudged on
foot, their appearance telling of the frightful hardships of the desert
route. Hardly a rag covered their swarthy forms." Marocco used to be
the destination of most of the slaves transported across the desert.
About twenty-five years ago the center of the traffic in that state was
Sidi Hamed ibu Musa, seven days journey south of Mogador where a
great yearly festival was held. The slaves were forwarded thence in
gangs to different towns, especially to Marocco City, and Mequinez.
Writing in 1897, Vincent says the slave trade is as active as ever at
Mequinez and Marocco City. The slaves were sold on Fridays in the
public markets of the interior, but never publicly at any of the seaports,
owing to the adverse European influence. There is a large traffic at Fez,

but Marocco City is the great mart for them, where one may see
frequently men, women and children sold at one time. Marakesh was
once a chief market in Marocco. In 1892 a caravan from Timbuktu
reached that city with no less than 4,000 slaves, chiefly boys and girls
whose price ranged from ten to fourteen pounds per head. As many as
800 were sold there within ten days to buyers from Riff, Tafilett and
other remote parts of the empire. A writer in the Anti-slavery Reporter,
December, 1895, said: "Few people know the true state of affairs in
Marocco; only those who live in daily touch with the common life of
the people really get to understand the pernicious and soul-destroying
system of human flesh-traffic as carried on in the public markets of the
interior. Having resided and traveled extensively in Marocco for some
seven years, I feel constrained to bear witness against the whole gang
of Arab slave-raiders and buyers of poor little innocent boys and girls.
"When I first settled in Marocco I met those who denied the existence
of slave-markets but since that time I have seen children, some of
whom were of tender years, as well as very pretty young women,
openly sold in the city of Marocco, and in the towns along the Atlantic
seaboard. It is also of very frequent occurrence to see slaves sold in Fez,
the capital of Northern Marocco.
"The first slave-girls that I actually saw being sold were of various ages.
They had just arrived from the Soudan, a distance by camel, perhaps, of
forty days'