Ancient and Modern Systems of Slavery. [_ APRIL., 



presents intended for the Sheikh of Bornou, caused it to be intimated 

 to Lander that it was his master's desire that he also should come to 

 Soccatoo, for which place he set out on the 25th November, and fell 

 into the power of the Fellatah Sultan in the end of December. 



Speaking of the laws and customs of the country, Lander points out 

 several crimes which are sufficient to reduce free men to slavery. 



" Slaves guilty of theft, or, indeed, of almost any other crime, are uni- 

 formly decapitated in Yariba, without the benefit of trial."* " Slavery, 

 from time immemorial, has flourished in every nation, and amongst every 

 people in the interior countries, and seems to be implanted so deeply in 

 the soil, that the slightest hope cannot be entertained of its being speedily 

 outrooted. Those sent to the sea-side from the interior are invariably 

 the scum and refuse of the country freebooters, lawless refractory fellows, 

 adulterers, and even murderers." "I have often seen disobedient slaves, 

 and slaves offered for sale, singing in chains and dancing in fetters, suf- 

 fering at the same time under a loathsome disease, and an accumulation 

 of misery, the very thoughts of which would melt, even to tears, a sym- 

 pathizing English philanthropist" (not, we fear, unless the slave had in 

 the first place been sent to our West India Colonies, then, we grant, the 

 regular philanthropists would make a noise indeed ; but so long as slaves 

 remain in their own country, King Adolee, or king any body else, may 

 flay them alive, or cut off their heads by the dozen, without any of the 

 present African "philanthropists" interfering!) "In their toilsome 

 journeyings from one part of the country to another, the captured slaves 

 undergo incredible hardships, yet when they arrive at the end of their 

 march, all their woes are buried for ever in a calabash of pitto or olee, 

 and they are as merry and thoughtless a day or two afterwards as they 

 ever were." On the coast, however, things wear a different and far less 

 agreeable aspect ; the slaves there are mostly captured from the neigh- 

 bouring states, and suddenly losing their darling amusements, become 

 melancholy and pensive on shipboard," &c. Honest Richard, or his 

 compiler, makes some further observations, w r hich appear quite at va- 

 riance with the whole tenour of the events that came under his notice. 

 " Upon the whole," says he, " I should consider the situation of the do- 

 mestic slave of Africa (their relative feelings compared) to be more 

 enviable than that of the household servant of Europe, inasmuch as a 

 feeling of dependence never enters the mind of the former," &c. (they 

 want the anti-slavery reporter to enlighten them J) and he talks of the 

 condition of the slaves of the European planter, and of their writhing 

 in agony under " the excoriating lash of the unfeeling planter," as wisely 

 as if he really had been for years in the pay of the Anti-colonial society. 

 It is true, he says, he visited St. Domingo in his youth, and was ser- 

 vant to Major Colebrooke, one of the commissioners of inquiry sent to 

 the Cape of Good Hope, but this we believe to be the utmost extent of 

 his knowledge of colonial subjects, and that he is as little acquainted with 

 the treatment of slaves in the British colonies, as with Plutarch and the 

 Athenians character, learnedly put as the commencement of his next 

 chapter. 



The treacherous sultan, Bello, having succeeded in obtaining posses- 

 sion of the presents and letter intended for the Sheikh of Bornou, seems 

 afterwards to have paid little attention to our travellers. On the 13th of 

 April, Captain Clapperton sunk under the united influence of clisap- 



* Records, &c. p. 284. 



