Dhow Chasing in Zanzibar Waters - The Search For Mecca

358 APPENDIX.
recently been taken from the highlands, and
indeed the slaves themselves told us where they
had seen us, so that we could at once identify
them as having been drawn from the country
we had been in. I think that attention should
be prominently called to the condition of those
unfortunate people in their transit from the
interior, because, though I can quite see that
one's mouth is rather closed as to the status of
a slave when he gets to an Arab master, that
has nothing to do with the sufferings connected
with his capture. It is true that a slave is well
treated by his Arab master ; as has been well
observed, a man will not ill-treat his slave so
as to hurt him, any more than he will his horse,
but life is so cheap in the interior of the country
that this rule does not hold good at all, as far
as regards what takes place before the slave is
finally sold. AVhen I first went there in 1861
(and the state of things was even worse when I
left in 1864), the ordinary price of a slave was
two yards of calico—that is to say, for a boy
ten years of age. A woman would fetch something
more if she was likely to be sold to the
Kaffirs, or if she was likely to go on to one of
the Portuguese farms, or to go to any of the
Portuguese in Mozambique : she might have
fetched eight yards of calico; but the price
varied very much. The process of catching