"To form a correct conception of the Sahara," says a writer in the Edinburgh Review, condensing the information contained in some of the recent French publications on the subject, "our readers must dismiss from their minds all the loose and fantastic conceptions which have been attached, from time immemorial, to the interior of northern Africa. Instead of a torrid region, where boundless steppes of burning sand are abandoned to the roving horsemen of the Desert, and to beasts of prey, and where the last vestiges of Moorish civilization expire long before the traveler arrives at Negroland and the savage communities of the interior, the Sahara is now ascertained to consist of a vast archipelago of oases; each of them peopled by a tribe of the Moorish race or its offsets, more civilized, and more capable of receiving the lessons of civilization, than the houseless Arabs of the Tell [the mountainous tract lying between the Great Desert and the sea]; cultivating the date-tree with application and ingenuity, inhabiting walled towns, living under a regular government, for the most part of a popular origin; carrying to some perfection certain branches of native manufactures, and keeping up an extensive system of commercial intercourse with the northern and central part of the African continent, and from Mogador to Mecca, by the enterprise and activity of their caravans. Each of the oases of the Sahara, which are divided from one another by sandy tracts, bearing shrubs and plants fit only for the nourishment of cattle, presents an animated group of towns and villages. Every village is enriched by a profusion of fruit-bearing trees. The palm is the monarch of their orchards, as much by the grace of its form, as by the value of its productions; and the pomegranate, the fig-tree, and the apricot cluster around its lofty stem. The lions and other beasts of prey with which poetry has peopled the African wilds are to be met with only in the mountains of the Tell, never in the plains of the Sahara. The robber tribes of the Tuaricks frequent the southern frontier of the Sahara, and the last tracts of habitable land which intervene between these oases and the real Desert; but in the Sahara itself, communications, carried on after the fashion of the country, are regular and secure. War is, indeed, of frequent occurrence between the neighboring tribes, either for the possession of disputed territories, or the revenge of supposed injuries; but all that is yet known of these singular communities shows them to be living in a completely constituted state of society, eminently adapted to the peculiar part of the globe which they inhabit, governed by the strong traditions of a primitive people, and fulfilling with energy and intelgence, the strange vocations of their life.”

"Almost all the Sahara tribes," says M. Carette, a French captain of engineers, who has contributed much to clear up our notions of this portion of Africa, are accustomed to a system of annual peregrination, which must have existed from time immemorial, inasmuch as it is based upon the nature of the climate and the produce, and the primary wants of their existence. This general movement is commonly performed in the following manner :-During the winter and spring the tribes are collected in the waste tracts of the Sahara, which, at this season of the year, supply water and fresh vegetation, but they never remain more than three or four days on any one spot; and when the pasture is exhausted, they strike their tents, and go to establish themselves

elsewhere. Toward the end of the spring they pass through the towns of the Sahara, where their merchandise is deposited. They load their camels with dates and woollen stuffs, and then turn their steps toward the north, taking with them their whole wandering city-women, dogs, herds, and tents-for it is at this season that the springs begin to dry and the plants to wither on the Sahara, at the same time that the corn is ripe in the Tell. There they arrive at the moment of the harvest, when corn is abundant and cheap, and thus they take a double advantage of the season, by abandoning the waste as it becomes arid, and seeking their fresh stock of provisions in the north, when the markets are overstocked with grain. The summer they pass in this country in commercial activity, exchanging their dates and woolen manufactured goods for corn, raw wool, sheep, and butter; while their herds are allowed to browse freely upon the lands, which lie fallow after the gathering in of the harvest. The signal for the return homeward is given at the end of the summer; the camels are reloaded, the tents again struck, and the wandering city once more marches forth, as it came, in short days' journeys toward the south. The Sahara is regained about the middle of October, the period when the dates are ripe. A month is passed in gathering and storing this fruit; another is devoted to the exchange of the wheat, and barley, and raw wool for the year's dates and the woolen stuffs-the produce of the yearly labor of the women. When all this business is concluded, and the merchandise stored away, the tribes quit the towns, and lead their flocks and herds from pasture-land to pasture-land among the waste tracts of the Sahara, until the following summer calls for a renewal of the same journey, the same system of trade.

"The Sahara," continues M. Carette, "is that part of Algeria which is most civilized and most capable of receiving civilization. It is there that habits of precision are most generally diffused, and there that we find the greatest amount of intelligence, activity, and social disposition." The only portion of the Sahara which answers to our ideas of an uninterrupted waste of sand, seems to be the most southern belt of it, which adjoins Nigritia, and which is infested by a roving race called the Tuaricks, who conduct a commercial intercourse, especially in slaves, between the negro countries and the oases of the more northern parts of the Sahara. "These Tuaricks." says M. Carette, "pretend to be of Turkish descent, and affect to treat the Arabs with disdain. They are tall, strong, of slender make, and of fair complexion, with the exception of a few of mixed blood. They wear a head-dress, one of the ends of which covers the whole face except the eyes; and almost all, whether rich or poor, have their feet bare, because, according to their own account, they never go on foot." The southern Tuaricks keep the towns of the Soudan in a constant state of blockade, hunting down the negroes in their neighborhood, and carrying them off for sale.

From the general survey which we have taken of Africa, and of the progress of African discovery, it appears that, while there is scarcely a point in its vast circuit where Europeans have not attempted to settle, scarcely any of the settlements have flourished. For the purposes of trade, such establishments will no doubt be maintained at a vast sacrifice of life-the consequence

of the pestilential effects of the climate on European constitutions; but it is not likely that any settlements of a permanent description will be effected except at the southern and northern extremities of the continent. Cape Colony as yet is the most prosperous, indeed the only settlement worthy of the name in Africa; whether the French will be able to make anything of Algeria, remains yet to be seen. As for the center of the continent, it seems quite hopeless to suppose that Europeans can ever operate there directly. The utmost that can be anticipated is, that they shall be able to act upon the continent through native agents. By establishing a commerce with central Africa, they may stimulate whatever tendencies to civilization exist among the negro races; they may create an activity through the continent resembling that caused by the slave traffic, but every way nobler and more beneficial. Whatever seeds of improvement there are among the natives, whether negroes, Foulahs, or Arabs, may be developed by this means, and made to fructify. And in this respect, nothing could be more gratifying than to know that the opinion explained in a former part of this article, with regard to Central Africa, is well-founded, and that an actual movement is in progress among the natives toward a more advanced stage of humanity.

"The tastes and tendencies of the African mind seem to tend toward music and the softer arts, rather than toward the scientific and stronger developments of intellect. If this be the ultimate tendency of African tastes and developments, then it may be a very desirable and beautiful civilization, that country will ultimately attain; but one which will never counteract the domination of the Gothic, or, as it is now called, the Anglo-Saxon superiority. It is only the scientific development of the human mind, which can ever wield power.

"Africa is probably destined, eventually, to receive a civilization, as soft and luxurious, as ancient Asia; but, raised to a far higher level, by the genius of Christianity-Christianity is itself mild, peaceful, and softening, and may, therefore, ultimately find in Africa and in Eastern climes, a soil congenial and peculiar to itself. Amid the world's overturning and revolutions, it may happen, that Europe will be darkened and defiled by a gross infidelity, while America and Africa may become the residence of the purest and brightest Christianity! Such a revolution would be no more marvelous than that Babylon and Tyre have become ruins, and returned to barbarism. The world is but a complex scene of ruin, revolution, and restoration, The day is dawning for Africa, and even the blackness of her night will pass away before the renewing influence of Christian civilization."

CHAPTER III.

ORIGIN of Slavery-Rise of the African Slave-trade-African and American Slave-tradeSlave Factories-Slave Hunts in Nubia-Modern African Slave-trade-Nominal abolition of the Slave trade-Horrors of the Middle Passage-Conclusion.

THE mere name of Africa insensiby suggests, in connection, its great leading article of commerce, the traffic in men. To give a few pages to this

subject, in concluding this article, will be found instructive to some of our readers.

Slavery, in some form, has existed from the remotest ages. It obtained, among the Patriarchs, was a recognized institution of the Jews, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans. In reading the history of any ancient State, we are apt to forget it is only of the free inhabitants that it relates, and of the immense mass of bondsmen, we learn next to nothing. Debtors were then sold to liquidate their debts; gamblers staked their liberty on their last chance; or criminals were enslaved for crime; parents sold their children, and finally, war, more than all others united, added its multitudes of vanquished as victims to slavery.

The most enlightened nations of antiquity gave the broadest sanction to this institution. In Rome the slaves formed a motley population; some were foreigners, others natives-some less civilized than their masters, others more so-some tilled their masters' fields; others taught them the sciencessome worked in chains, and endured the task; others lived in comfort and were even petted! Thus a rich citizen of Rome, eighteen hundred years ago, would possess slaves of all nations-dark haired beauties from the East; golden haired ones from the North; cooks from southern Italy; learned men and musicians from Greece or Egypt; menials and drudges from remote Scythia, interior Africa, or the savage island of Britain. Out of this promiscuous system arose negro slavery.

Negroland or Nigritia may be called the land of negroes. In ancient times, it bore but a share of the burden. Britons and Scythians were the fellow-slaves of the Ethiopian; but at last, all the other nations seemed to conspire against the negro race, agreeing never to enslave each other, but to make the blacks the slaves of all alike. Thus the abolition of promiscuous slavery, in the modern world, was purchased by the introduction of a slavery confined entirely to negroes.

The African tribes, who ultimately became the universal prey of Europeans, themselves subjected men to perpetual bondage, and from remotest time, every wealthy negro had his slaves alike with the rich Greek or Roman. As in civilized countries, the slave population in the interior of Africa, many times exceed that of the free. So the modern form of negro slavery originated with the negroes themselves. In ancient times, negroes were transported by their Arab or negro owners, across the desert, and sold to the Carthaginians and Egyptians, and occasionally would be exported from thence into southern Europe, where they were always highly valued for their patience, mild temper and extraordinary endurance. Still anciently, in Europe, the negro enjoyed not that miserable pre-eminence which now assigns him as the born drudge of the human family. White-skinned men were alike slaves, and if in Carthage and Egypt, black slaves more abounded, it was solely because more easily obtained.

Although the use of negroes as slaves, by the Arabs, gave the first hint of negro slavery to the Europeans, the Europeans are quite entitled to the credit of having found it out for themselves. As the Portuguese were the first Europeans acquainted with Africa, so they first set the example of from

thence obtaining negroes. As early as 1434, one Anthony Gonzales, a Portuguese, carried from the coast of Guinea a few negro lads, and sold them to some Moorish families in Spain,—an act which provoked criticism at the time. But from that day it became customary for the captains of vessels landing on that coast to export a few young negroes. The traffic proving profitable, negroes no longer were exported as curiosities in twos and threes, but formed a part of the cargo, as well as gold, ivory and gum. The ships no longer sailed to discover new countries, but for lucrative cargoes; and the inhabitants of the negro villages along the coast, delighted with the knives, bright cloths, beads and other gewgaws, they received for gold, ivory and slaves, were sure to have these ready for any ship that might land, so that in about seventy years after Gonzales had carried away the negro boys, the slave trade was in full blast, thousands being annually exported,—a traffic in which the Spaniards had then also entered.

The West India Islands was the first part of America colonized by the Spaniards. They first employed the Indians to labor for them; these, although capable of much passive endurance, drooped and lost all heart when put to labor, and this ill-usage and the small-pox carried them off in thousands, so that in St. Domingo alone, in the short space of seven years, between 1508 and 1515, the natives dwindled from 60,000 to 14,000. The condition of these poor aborigines became so heart-breaking, that the Dominican priests espoused their cause, asserting them to be free men, and denying the right of making them slaves. Bartholomew de Las Casas, a benevolent priest, by his energy and perseverance as a friend of the Indians produced a great effect upon the Spanish government.

The relaxation in favor of one race was at the expense of the slavery of another. As early as 1503 a few negroes had been imported into America, and it was found that not only could each do as much work as four Indians, but that while the Indians were fast becoming extinct, the negroes thrived, waxed fat and propagated wonderfully. The plain inference was to import negroes as fast as possible, and it was done.

The Spaniards remained not long alone in this new traffic; but as they first had all America to themselves where negro labor was in demand, they alone possessed large numbers of negroes. But when other nations came to colonize America, they patronized the slave-trade. In 1616, negroes were first imported into Virginia, in a Dutch vessel, on trial; these the planters found so useful that negroes speedily came in great demand in the old Dominion. English merchants, calculating and vigilant then as now, embarked in the traffic, and soon others, so that by the middle of the 17th century all Europe was buying and selling negroes.

So universal is the spirit for barter, that immediately the new and great demand for slaves created its own supply. Slavery had always existed in Negroland, but was comparatively limited. The new demand stimulated the natural animosities of the various negro tribes on the west coast; and tempted by the clasp-knives, looking-glasses, and wonderful red cloth the white men always brought, the whole negro population for many miles inland began fighting and kidnapping each other. Finally the far interior, the