No. 642.
Mr. Farman to Mr. Evarts.
Cairo, May 5, 1880. (Received May 31.)
Sir: I have the honor to inform you that 35 Arabs, charged with being slave-dealers, were last week apprehended at Assioût, and have just been brought to Cairo, together with 68 slaves that were found with them. These slaves are all quite young, and many of them children. There are 29 boys from five to eighteen years old, and 39 girls from eight to twenty.
Assioût is on the west bank of the Nile, 230 miles above Cairo, and is the principal city of Upper Egypt. The valley is here very narrow, the Lybian range advancing to a point very near the river, and one of of its projecting mountains rises up close behind the city on the west.
In this mountain are a large number of grottoes or tombs, chambers -cut in the limestone rock, which once served as burial places for the inhabitants of the very ancient town of Lycopolis, “city of the wolves.” Some of these grottoes are very large, consisting of a succession of chambers and passages, while others in various parts of the mountain are comparatively small, and still others only of a sufficient size for a body.
Some of these tombs are said to have been occupied by the early Christians as dwelling places, either on account of their safety or their solitude. More recently they have been from time to time the refuge and homes of thieves and other outlaws, who have often been enabled by means of these excavated recesses, resembling catacombs, and their hidden passages, to evade the vigilance of the officers of the government.
The mountain constitutes the border of the desert at this point and is wholly destitute of verdure, but it overlooks the rich green valley and the city with its lofty minarets.
[Page 1009]From time immemorial caravans have come from Central Africa, generally from the vicinity of the province of Darfour, across the desert to this point, a distance of over 1,000 miles. They bring with them the products of that distant region, ivory, ostrich feathers, tamarinds, and slaves, and also natron found on the way and take back such articles of merchandise as are considered most desirable in their country, consisting mostly of showy prints and other highly colored cotton cloths. Latterly, since the slave trade was prohibited by the late Khedive, Ismail Pacha, they have ostensibly brought only the other articles named, but have nevertheless continued more or less clandestinely their traffic in slaves.
These caravans have been in the habit of encamping just outside of the city, on the border of the desert, at the foot of the mountain I have mentioned, and there carrying on their negotiations with the merchants and other people of the town.
Two weeks ago a caravan arrived and encamped in the usual place. A gentleman who visited the encampment soon after the arrival informs me that he counted 600 camels and 280 persons, the latter number not including any slaves. On being interrogated as to whether they had any slaves, they answered in the negative. It appears from what was afterwards learned that they hid, during the day, a part of the slaves in the tombs I have mentioned, and the balance in their low tents, and at night made their sales and introduced them blindfolded into the town.
The fact that such a caravan had brought a large number of slaves, which were being sold to any one who wished to buy, could not have been any secret among the leading natives of such a town. No secrecy would be required, except as to a few Europeans and converted Copts, and had it not been for the zeal of a young man by the name of Roth, a native of Switzerland and a teacher in the American mission school at Assioût, the caravan would in the course of a few days have sold its slaves as well as its other merchandise, bought its goods and necessary supplies, and disappeared among the mountains of the desert.
This young man visited the caravan for three days in succession without discovering any indication of slaves, but on the third day he saw two children in the town being led by a servant of the French consular agent, one of the principal Copts of Assioût, and he at once recognized them by their language and the manner in which their hair was dressed as negroes lately from the region whence the caravan had come. He undertook to get possession of the children, but he was soon surrounded by a crowd of natives, and the consular agent himself came and took them away.
Being somewhat aroused by this incident, and learning from a freedman, who had been brought as a slave from the same country and could speak its language, that the caravan had with it a considerable number of slaves, Mr. Roth came the next day to Cairo to give information of what he had ascertained, and having learned that the English Government had a treaty with that of Egypt prohibiting the slave trade, he went to the English consul-general and stated to him the facts.
The consul general went with him to the president of the ministry, Riaz Pasha, and the next day 300 soldiers were sent to Assioût by rail to arrest the supposed slave-traders. The train stopped a little before arriving at the town and the soldiers marched in and surrounded the camp at three o’clock in the morning, and found the 68 slaves I have mentioned. Thirty-five Arabs, supposed to be the pretended owners, [Page 1010] were also found with, them and arrested. The next day an examination was made of some of the tombs of the mountain, on information of the slaves that had been kept in them, but although the places where they had been detained were recognized, no more slaves were found. If they had not already been taken into the town, they had, on the camp being surrounded, been hidden or hastened away among the mountains of the desert. There is sufficient evidence that a considerable number had already been sold.
From the stories of the children and the number of camels it is thought that there were originally nearly 1,000 slaves in the caravan. A few of them are supposed to have been sent to points higher up on the river, and the rest had been sold or secreted at Assioût before the arrival of the soldiers. It would be perfectly easy to secrete in a city like this a very large number of slaves. The privacy of the harem is sacred, and it is very rarely that even an officer of the law can enter the woman’s apartments of Mussulmans. I have also reliable information that some of the slaves had already arrived in Cairo and been there sold previous to the departure of the soldiers for Assioût.
The arrested slave-dealers are now in prison, and the slaves have been given papers of manumission and are being placed in the families of such persons as desire to have them.
The caravan occupied about one hundred days in its journey from El Fasher, in Darfour. It came by a camel route, long used by the Arabs, which is from 50 to 400 miles west of the Nile and nearly parallel with the general course of the river. The whole distance is but a barren waste of mountainous desert. There is occasionally, but very rarely, an oasis, which generally consists of a depression of the earth’s surface, in which, by the sinking of wells, water can be obtained in quantities sufficient to sustain a few palms and sometimes a little other vegetation. Some of the larger ones have running water, which comes from springs and runs a short distance and again disappears. Along the whole route there is nothing but these oases to relieve the eye from the ever repeating scenes of hills, valleys, and mountains of rock, gravel, and sand.
The slaves sometimes walked and sometimes were permitted to ride on the camels, and they frequently suffered for want of water, the supply of which was always scanty. At one part of the route for fifteen days no water is found, and from Assioût to the first oasis it is five days’ travel. They give various statements as to their homes and capture. Some say they were sleeping in their huts and these people came and took them; others that they were stolen in the fields while watching the sheep and cattle. Some of the girls say that they were married in their native country and were stolen from their husbands, and still others that they were already slaves and were bought. Nearly all this class of slaves are originally kidnapped, but sometimes when so young that they have no recollection of the event.
The Arabs of this caravan belong to a trading tribe known as Zaidiahs, who live in the desert regions of Darfour, and have long been habituated to traffic in slaves.
I have heretofore had occasion to say that as long as there is in Egypt, Syria, and other parts of the Ottoman Empire a market for this kind of merchandise that market will be supplied. After a temporary check that was put upon the slave trade while Gordon Pasha was governor-general of Soudan, it now appears, either from the increased demand or the diminished restraint, to have recommenced with new vigor.
A few days since Captain Burton and a friend of his were visiting the natron lakes that are in the edge of the desert southwest of Alexandria, [Page 1011] and not far from the sea, and he saw two caravans with slaves. This is a favorable point for their introduction into Lower Egypt. Some are also taken to the sea, and thence in small sailing vessels to Syria, Asia-Minor, and other parts of Turkey. Many are taken across the Red Sea from a point near Suaken and landed in Arabia, and taken thence with the caravans to various parts of western Asia.
No very materially different state of things can be expected as long as slavery is permitted in all these countries, and those whose business it is to prevent the slave trade are themselves among the buyers. The importation of slaves into Egypt could be easily prevented if the governing classes desired it should be done; but, unfortunately, they are the very persons who are among the principal patrons of the slave-dealers. There are slaves in the house of every Mussulman in Egypt who has the means to buy them, and the same is true of the Copts, the Syrians, the Armenians, and many other Christians The number of any class that raise their voices against this system is very limited, and this may also be said of that dominant class of Europeans who virtually govern Egypt. These persons are just now even making serious complaints against the president of the council of ministers for having given the peasants the idea that they are free. One of the charges against the ex-Khedive was that of the corvée, a system by which, as was claimed, the fellahs were compelled to work on the great estates, and for the sheiks and other persons in authority, gratuitously or for a nominal price. So much had been said and written on that subject that Riaz Pasha, who is minister of the interior and of finance, as well as president of the council, felt compelled, as the chief of the “reform ministry,” to issue a circular, by which the peasants were informed that they were free, and not obliged to work for any one except under contracts voluntarily made. This was done but a few days ago. The result was that they stopped work at once, and those interested in the Daira and Rothschild mortgages, as well as the holders of estates, complain that the fellahs will not now work. The fact simply is that they will not work for the sheiks or other persons in power gratuitously, nor for the Daïra or Domain administrations for two piasters (ten cents) a day, boarding themselves, as they have heretofore done.
There is a great commotion on this question among the interested Europeans. They say the people of Egypt are not ready for any such reforms. In their opinion a fellah who is not willing to work for 10 cents a day and furnish his own food in a country where provisions are as high in price as in the United States is not yet prepared for liberty. “If labor is not to be obtained for this price, how is the interest to be paid on the mortgages given by the government and the ex-Khedive?” asks the holder of mortgaged bonds; “and how am I to pay the taxes demanded?” asks the landed proprietor. The result will probably be that the minister will be compelled to modify his circular by some explanatory orders or lose his place.
While such ideas are dominant among the governing class, not only native but European, what hope is there for any real, bona-fide, energetic action for the suppression of the slave trade? The government is, of course, under its treaty, compelled to take notice of any case of traffic in slaves that is formally brought to its attention; but the officers of the law never have any knowledge on the subject other than that which is imposed upon them by some zealous European in such a manner as to leave no opportunity for evasion.
[Page 1012]As to the character of slavery in Egypt and the condition of its slaves, I beg leave to refer you to my dispatch No. 235, of June 8, 1878.
I have, &c.,