COMMERCE. 
509 
tains to the south as far as Ashantee. The last, 
and greatest caravan, is that from Morocco. It 
holds its rendezvous at Akka, or Tatta, and 
thence proceeds in a south-easterly direction to 
Tombuctoo. The journey occupies a hundred 
and twenty-nine days, more than half of which, 
however, is spent in rest. A circuitous route 
along the sea- coast is sometimes preferred. 
In enumerating the objects of African traffic, 
it is lamentable that the first place must be held 
by one equally degrading and disgraceful to 
human nature, — slaves. Why Africa should, 
from the earliest ages, have been ransacked for 
this unfortunate class of beings, is not very easily 
determined* It is, however, satisfactory to think, 
that no farther efforts can now be necessary to 
rouse the public mind to a due sense of the enor- 
mity of this traffic. Splendid orations by the 
first parliamentary orators, the generous efforts of 
private philanthropists, and, perhaps more than 
all, a series of masterly discussions upon this sub- 
ject, diffused through the universally circulated 
medium of the Edinburgh Review, have ex- 
hausted and rendered superfluous every argument 
which could be used on the subject. It only re- 
mains, therefore, to give a rapid sketch of slavery 
and the slave-trade, as it now exists throughout 
this continent. 
Slavery is general throughout Africa ; but the 
