TRIPOLI'S SHAMEFUL TRADE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 179, 27 January 1912, Page 10

TRIPOLI'S SHAMEFUL TRADE

THE GATE OF AFRICA'S SLAVE TRAFFIC. With the passing of Tripoli from the control of Turkey, the pernicious institution of slave trading along the northern coast of Africa will receive a severe —it is hoped a fatal—blow. Tripoli is the chief Mediterranean gateway to the Sahara. Her trade in the past has been largely in negroes brought across the burning sands, with other Soudan produce, for the Turkish markets. The dealer in human flesh has looked upon Tripoli as his natural clearing-house for the spoilß of the man-hunt. When this last gateway leading from the northern coast of Africa to the slave markets of Turkey is closed as a result of the present war, what will become of the infamous slave raiders so long engrossed in the rise and fall in the price of human beings. Sir Charles Eliot, in his book, entitled, "The East African Protectorate," informs us: "The caravans of slaves were brought down to the coast, whence many found their way to Turkey. (British prudery has prevented the manufacture of eunuchs from receiving the opprobrium which it has merited, but as practised by Oriental slave raiders it has occasioned the most appalling mortality and sensibly increased the sum of human misery. The processes of capture and conveying to the market seems to have generally been as barbarous as was compatible with not killing the human merchandise."

''You will find an occasional Arab," wT'.es Charles Wellington Furlong, in his recent volume, entitled, "Tripoli: The Gateway to the Sahara," "who will tell you of a route known only to the Senussi, who make proselytising wars and expeditions from Wadai to their capital. Along this route it is said that never fewer than fifteen caravans cross the desert every year, which bring about ten thousand slaves alive to tell the tale, and they estimate that forty thousand victims fall on the march. Once on the secret route you cannot fail to find your way, for it is lined with human bones." Listen to a story told by a slave who escaped from his persecutors and related to Mr. Furlong the details of his maddening experience: "I was among those captured and taken to Fishni. The journey was hard. Some of the slaves attempted to escape, and were clubbed to death. I was then fourteen years old, and valuable. We passed many caravans. Some of the slaves were bound t with thongs or under heavy yokes. One method was to fasten from'ten to twenty slaves together, one behind another, by shoving their jieads through holes cut every few feet in a long wooden yoke. Sometimes one of these human strings thus fastened together would make futile attempt sto escape, painfully jogging in step through the bush or forest until soon ran down by their merciless pursuers."

Now and then, as they staggered by, one saw a man or woman, too weak and exhausted to walk, hanging limp by his neck, his feet dragging along the ground, his dead weight adding to the insufferable tortures of the others hitched to the same yoke. "At such times," writes Mr. Furlong, "unless near a market, the sick are despatched by their drivers, who, not wishing the trouble of unshackling a wretch, resort to the simple expedient of decapitation, thus releasing soul and body at one cruel stroke." Loaded into tiny and miserable ships, made small, so as the more readily to' keep out of view of the watchful cruisers of Great Britain and Russia that are prowling about, these wretched human beings are forwarded in great batches in the depth of winter, and shipped like catle across the waters at the season of the y/>ar when they will be least likely to attract attention. Girls arc sold on the steamers which ply up and down the Bosphorous. Oil their journey from Tripoli to Lake Chad, north of the Sedan, Denham and ('lapperton noted frightful evidences of the infamous traffic. "During the ( last two days," they wrote, "we have passed on an average from sixty to ninety skeletons each day, but the numbers that lay about the wells at El-Hammar we're countless. Those of two women, whose perfect and regular teeth bespoke them young, were particularly shocking. Their arms still remained clasped around each other as they expired, although the flesh had long since perished by being exposed to the burning rays of the sun, and the blackened bones only left." The public sale of slaves in Constantinople has revently been suppressed in deference to European prejudices. But the system of slavery still exists throughout tlie whole of the Empire.