A writer attached to the staff of the Turkestan ski Vedemosti compiled a chronicle of the number of Russian slaves who had been at various epochs detained in Central Asia. The aggregate total amounted to some thousands.
3fany generations have passed away since the Tartars sacked Moscow and Kieff, and carried off men and women into bondage in Asia ; but old men are still living in South Russia whose fathers were bought and sold in the Tartar slave markets of the Crimea ; and both in the Caucasus and at Orenburg may be seen middle-aged men whose youth was spent in bondage in Khiva and Bok tiara. The gunner Kidaeff, captured from the garrison at Fort Petro Alexandrovsk on the Oxus shortly after the Khivan campaign, and taken as a slave to Merv, was perhaps the last of the long list of Russian unfortunates whose tears have I moistened the sands of Central Asia.
I When Major Abbott visited the khanate of Khiva in 1811, upwards of 700,000 persons out of a population of 2,468,500, or 1 in every 3, were slaves. In the city of Kliiva alone were 12,000 Herati and 30,000 Persians, the rest of the bonds men being scattered about the country as tillers of the soil. Writing of the same period, Wolff, the missionary, calculated that out of the 4. millions composing the population of Bokhara, 200,000 were in a state of bondage. Burnes, another traveller, observed of a, I3okharan village near the Oxus in 1832, that though not boast ing of more than 20 houses, there were yet 7 or 8 Persian slaves.' To capture these slaves w as a regular pursuit on the part of the nomade tribes living adjacent to Khiva and Bokhara. The Khivans annihilated the expedition that Peter the Great despatched against them under Prince Bekovitch- Tcherkassky ; and, more recently, the Tekke-Turkomans of Mery captured 20,000 Persian soldiers in 1861 just outside their strong hold, and glutted the market to such a degree that the price of an able-bodied man fell to a pound.
The alaman or Turkoman raiding expeditions may be said to have received a death-blow when the Russians breached the walls of Goek Tepe. Already, years before, the slave market had been closed at Khiva and Bokhara by the Russian invaders ; and the task they have achieved, of sup pressing slavery outside Afghanistan and Merv, might rival the costly exertions of Britain on the African coast and in the Pacific.
Slave Trade.—Until the early part of the 10th century, Great Britain permitted her colonies to retain slaves, but from the efforts of Wilberforce, Clarkson, and others, Britain then abolished slavery in ber colonies, as had already been (lone in the British Islands. Until after the middle of the 19th century, the United States of America held in slavery about five millions of the African races and their descendants of mixed blood, but the slave law was then changed after a civil war in hich great numbers of men were slain. During the 19th century, Britain made vast and costly efforts to suppress the slave trade from the west coast of Africa, but till 1884 it continues on the east side of Africa, principally carried on through Arabs and Hindu natives of India.
The Hindu 'aces have been settled as traders on the east coast of Africa from tho most ancient known times. When the Portuguese first doubled the Cape, they found 13anya traders established at every great port, and it was from them that Vasco da Grum and his successors learned the secret of the easy approach to India by the aid of the monsoons. They have held in their hands the trade of the east coast of Africa, and are still to be found as far south as Delagoa Bay. All the trade between that coast and Europe, America, or Asia passes throu,gh the hands of some branch of the Banya community, purchasing goods whole sale from the European or American importer, and selling them in retail for the interior. They are of the Bhattia and Banya tribes of llindus, and the traffic is shared by the Khojah and Borah Muhammad:ins ; and in 1872, a merchant, Mathur Das Khetsi writing in the Ita.st Guftar stated that from 10,000 to 20,000 slaves passed yearly through Kelwi on their way to Sualtili and Ambia. The E. African slave trade by that year had depopulated much of the sea-coast line. To the south of Pangani is the territory of the heathen Wasegua tribe, and the great centre of the traffic. The Arabs of Zanzibar come here, and for muskets, powder, and shot purchase the slaves from the Wasegua chiefs.