issi] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 593 



I pass now to speak of the slave trade. It appears 

 clear that the destruction of the trade would soon put 

 an end to slavery. For, partly from frequent manu 

 missions, which are favoured by custom and religion, 

 partly from the small number of slave marriages, home- 

 born slaves are few. But for this very reason, as long 

 as slavery is a prevalent institution, the means of import 

 ing boys and girls will be sought and probably found. 

 The Red Sea is narrow, and many parts of the coasts 

 are very dangerous to cruisers, which can hardly thread 

 their way through the reefs, behind which the swift 

 native boats engaged in the trade know many convenient 

 points at which to collect or land slaves. The British 

 cruisers certainly inspire some terror, and occasionally, 

 though very rarely, effect a capture ; but up to the present 

 time, not having enjoyed the right of search in boats 

 bearing the Turkish flag in Turkish waters, they have 

 had to contend with difficulties which in such seas are 

 almost insuperable. Under the new treaty it is to be 

 hoped that the action of our cruisers will be much more 

 efficacious, especially in checking the present system by 

 which slaves are landed in Yemen at Hodeida, for 

 example, where there is no Consul to keep an eye on the 

 trade and sent up in small numbers by coasting boats 

 to the Hejaz market. Still it can hardly be hoped that 

 foreign cruisers will succeed in putting down the trade 

 until the Egyptian and Turkish Governments are in 

 earnest to make an end of the traffic. Are they so now ? 

 In Egypt, there has until now been one man who was in 

 earnest Colonel Gordon. To his efforts, much more 

 than to any other cause or all other causes put together, 

 must mainly be ascribed the decline which has recently 

 taken place in the exportation of slaves from the African 

 coast. But Colonel Gordon is no longer ruler of the 

 Soudan, and it would be sanguine to hope for much from 

 his native successor, though it is so far well that the 

 coasting police is to be re-established. That Egyptian 



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