Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 | Page 6

we ourselves. They have organized and established regular governments through all Central Africa, and inculcated a taste for the occupation and the principles of commerce. A great portion of this internal trade is untainted by slavery. Bornou, Soudan, Timbuctoo, and Jinnee, exhibit to us groups of immense and populous cities, all regularly governed and trading with one another. They have abolished human sacrifice, which lingers in our East India possessions to this day. They have regulated marriage and restrained polygamy. They have made honour and reverence to be paid to grey hairs, superseding the diabolical custom of exposing or destroying the aged. They have introduced a knowledge of reading and writing. The oases of Ghat and Ghadames furnish more children, in proportion, who can read and write, than any of our English towns. The Koran is transcribed in beautiful characters by Negro Talebs on the banks of the Niger. The Moors have likewise introduced many common useful trades into Central Africa. But above all, the Mohammedans have introduced the knowledge of the one true God! and destroyed the fetisch idols. Let us then take care how we arrogate to ourselves the right and fact of civilizing the world. Nay, there cannot be a question, if we would abandon Africa to the Mohammedans, and leave off our man-stealing trade and practices on the Western Coast, the dusky children of the torrid zones would gradually advance in civilization. But is not the bare idea of such an alternative an indelible disgrace to Christendom?
Mr. Cooley, in his learned work, entitled "The Negroland of the Arabs[4]," seems to doubt if the Slave-Trade can be abolished or civilization advanced, in Central Africa, because of the neighbourhood of The Desert. This, however, is transferring the guilt of slavery and of voluntary barbarism, if barbarism can be crime, from the volition of responsible man to a great natural fact, or circumstance of creation--The Desert; and is a style of observation perfectly indefensible, as well as contrary to philosophy and facts. First, we cannot limit the stretch or progress of the Negro mind any more than that of the European intellect. Mr. Cooley himself admits that the Nigritian people have advanced in civilization. And if they have advanced, why not continue to advance? But so far contrary are facts to Mr. Cooley's theory, that The Desert, instead of being an obstacle to civilization, is favourable to it, whilst the Nigritian countries beyond the influence of The Desert are plunged into deeper barbarism. The reader will only have to compare my account of the Touaricks, with the recently published account of the social state of the kingdom of Dahomy, to convince himself how completely fallacious in application is Mr. Cooley's theory[5]. Slaves, too, abound in thickly populated countries as well as desert countries: witness China and India. The Sahara, also, has its paradisical spots, or oases of enjoyment, as well as its wastes and hardships. It is likewise, not true, that the Saharan tribes depend for their happiness on the possession of slaves, or that life in The Desert is galling and insupportable. Many a happy oasis is without a slave. However this may be, it is always an extremely dangerous line of argument, to represent moral depravity as springing necessarily from certain physical and unalterable circumstances of creation. Finally, to represent The Great Desert as the buttress of the Slave-Trade, is contrary to all our experience. In deserts and mountains we find always the free-men: in soft and luxurious countries we find the slaves. It is not the free-born Touarick who is the slave-dealer, or the stimulator of the slave-traffic, but the Moorish merchant, and the voluptuary on the coast who sends him. All that the Saharan tribes do, is to escort the merchants over The Desert; and they would still escort them over The Desert did they not deal in slaves, carrying on only legitimate commerce.
I may conclude by a word on Discoveries in The Sahara. It is now twenty years or more since The Sahara was explored, or before my present hap-hazard tour. From what I have seen since my return, and the little encouragement given to this sort of enterprise,--the public of Great Britain being so much occupied with railways, free-trade, and currency questions, educational schemes, and State endowed, or voluntary ecclesiastical establishments,--it is difficult to foresee how and when another tour may be undertaken, or how a tourist will have the heart to make another experiment. Unhappily, the spirit of discovery, like Virtue's self, is difficult to be satisfied with its own reward. Something, however, may in time be expected from the French, who will get restless in their Algerian limits, and make a bold effort to disenthral themselves, by leaping the bounds of the mysterious Sahara. Evidently the French Government have prohibited all