Besides the slave-trade on the Atlantic, there is another periodical exportation of slaves by caravans from Soudan to the Barbary states and Egypt, the annual number of which is variously estimated at between twenty and thirty thousand. There is also a trade carried on by the subjects of the Imaum of Muscat, who ex port slaves in Arab vessels from Zanzebar and other ports of the eastern coast of Africa, to Arabia, Persia, India, Java, and other places. In a despatch, dated Zanzebar, May, 1839, Captain Cogan esti mates the slaves annually sad in that market to be 50,000. The Portuguese also export slaves from their settlements on the Mozambique coast, to Goa, Din, and their other Indian possessions.
By a law of the Kora, which, however, is not always observed in all Mohamme dan countries, no Massalman is allowed to enslave one of his own faith. The Moslem negro kingdoms of Soudan supply the slave-trade at the expense of their subjects or neighbours, whom they pagan to the Moorish traders. Mohammedan powers will probably never suppress this trade of their own accord.
There is a considerable internal slave trade in the United States of North Ame rica. Negroes are bred and sold in Mary land and Virginia, and some other of the slave-holding states, and carried to the more fertile lands of Alabama, Louisiana, and other southern states.
It is maintained by some that the Afri can slave-trade cannot be effectually put down by force, and that the only chance of its ultimate suppression is by civilizing central Africa, by encouraging agricultu ral industry and legitimate branches of commerce, and at the same time spread ing education and Christianity ; and also by giving the protection of the British flag to those negroes who would avail themselves of it. It is certain that if
other countries will not exert themselves the abolition must be postponed to this remote period. The Africans sell men because they have no other means of pro curing Enropeau commodities, and there seems no doubt that one result of the slave-trade is to keep central Africa in a state of barbarism.
The amount of the slave population now existing in America is not easily as certained. By the census of 1835 Brazil contained 2,100,000 slaves. The slaves in Cuba, in 1826, were, according to Humboldt, about 260,000. In the United States the number of slaves was 2,487,355 by the census of 1840, which is 478,324 more than the number according to the census of 1830.
Societies for the ultimate and universal abolition of slavery exist in England, France, and the United States, and they publish their Reports ; and a congress was held in London, June, 1840, of dele gates from many countries to confer upon the means of effecting it. The American Society has formed a colony called Libe ria, near Cape Mesurado, on the west coast of Africa, where negrues who have obtained their freedom in the United States are sent, if they are willing to go. The English government has a colony for a similar purpose at Sierra Leone, where negroes who have been seized on board slavers by English cruisers are settled.