In Arabia
This Would Be The Case; But At Zanzibar It More Generally Happens
That The Slave Is Willed To His Successor.
The whole system of slaveholding by the Arabs in Africa, or
rather on the coast or at Zanzibar, is
Exceedingly strange; for
the slaves, both in individual physical strength and in numbers,
are so superior to the Arab foreigners, that if they chose to
rebel, they might send the Arabs flying out of the land. It
happens, however, that they are spell-bound, not knowing their
strength any more than domestic animals, and they even seem to
consider that they would be dishonest if they ran away after
being purchased, and so brought pecuniary loss on their owners.
There are many positions into which the slave may get by the
course of events, and I shall give here, as a specimen, the
ordinary case of one who has been freed by the death of his
master, that master having been a trader in ivory and slaves in
the interior. In such a case, the slave so freed in all
probability would commence life afresh by taking service as a
porter with other merchants, and in the end would raise
sufficient capital to commence trading himself - first in slaves,
because they are the most easily got, and then in ivory. All his
accumulations would then go to the Zanzibar market, or else to
slavers looking out off the coast. Slavery begets slavery. To
catch slaves is the first thought of every chief in the interior;
hence fights and slavery impoverish the land, and that is the
reason both why Africa does not improve, and why we find men of
all tribes and tongues on the coast.
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