that if one did
not know the route of their pilgrimage he could find the way by the
bones that lie to the right and left of the path. When he was passing
through Murzuk in 1865, he gave medical aid to a slave dealer who was
very ill, and, in compensation, received a boy about seven or eight
years old. The boy had traveled four months across the desert from
Lake Chad. He knew nothing of his home country, had even forgotten his
mother tongue, and could jabber only some fragments of speech picked
up from the other slaves of the caravan. As a result of the long
journey he was emaciated to a skeleton and so enfeebled that he could
scarcely stand up. He crawled on all fours and kissed the hand of his
new master, and the first words he uttered were "I am hungry." The boy
prospered and followed Rohlfs to Berlin. Thomson, in his travels,
mentions having met a caravan of forty slave-girls crossing the Atlas
Mountains on its way to Marocco. "A few were on camel-back, but most
of them trudged on foot, their appearance telling of the frightful
hardships of the desert route. Hardly a rag covered their swarthy
forms." Marocco used to be the destination of most of the slaves
transported across the desert. About twenty-five years ago the center
of the traffic in that state was Sidi Hamed ibu Musa, seven days
journey south of Mogador where a great yearly festival was held. The
slaves were forwarded thence in gangs to different towns, especially
to Marocco City, and Mequinez. Writing in 1897, Vincent says the slave
trade is as active as ever at Mequinez and Marocco City. The slaves
were sold on Fridays in the public markets of the interior, but never
publicly at any of the seaports, owing to the adverse European
influence. There is a large traffic at Fez, but Marocco City is the
great mart for them, where one may see frequently men, women and
children sold at one time. Marakesh was once a chief market in
Marocco. In 1892 a caravan from Timbuktu reached that city with no
less than 4,000 slaves, chiefly boys and girls whose price ranged from
ten to fourteen pounds per head. As many as 800 were sold there within
ten days to buyers from Riff, Tafilett and other remote parts of the
empire. A writer in the _Anti-slavery Reporter_, December, 1895, said:
"Few people know the true state of affairs in Marocco; only those who
live in daily touch with the common life of the people really get to
understand the pernicious and soul-destroying system of h