PRESENT DAY PRICES OF SLAVES.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 1 November 1901, Page 4

PRESENT DAY PRICES OF SLAVES.

The home-bred Britisher is so apt to regard slavery as an institution of the past that he will be somewhat surprised to hear the latest quotations in the slave market, for in spite of the fact that the Government keep 255 men with camels constantly employed in trying to break up the traffic in the Soudan certain experts affirm that the trade still flourishes in a greater or lesser degree. Most of the twenty-five offenders convicted during the last twelve months were sheikhs of the Rashidas, one of the most troublesome and dreaded tribes in the Soudan, The activity against them however, has driven most of them east into Italian territory. The slave trade at Jeddah has been the most serious to arrest. The principal traffic is from Massaua and the coast to the northward in Italian territory, Abyssinia, Hodeida, and Yemed. Yemed is noted for the export of the slaves who are procured from Abyssinia, At Jeddah there are twelve wealthy slave merchants whose nafnes and depots are well known.

The prices of slaves are:—Male or female, fourteen years old, about £l6 ; fourteen to twenty years, £2O to £25; twenty to thirty years, £3O each. In Medina and Mecca the prices of both sexes rise 50 per cent and upwards while some readily command from £BO to £IOO each.

A traveller who recently crossed Abyssinia, entering by the Zeila route and leaving by the Blue Nile, said that slavery existed in that portion of the country under the control of Menelik, but in a very restricted and comparatively humane form.

There are no auctions or open sales. In the country of Godjam, however, which is nominally subject te Menelik, the institution of slavery openly exists, and public sales take place in ordinary weekly markets. The supply of victims for this traffic is obtained principally by organised raids upon the country inhabited by mixed Shangalla tribes, which separates Abyssinia from the Anglo-Egyptian Soudan.