"I was walking barefoot, driving my horse, when I was met by a coffle [gang or company] of slaves, about seventy in number, coming from Sego. They were tied together by their necks with thongs of a bullock's hide, twisted like a rope, seven slaves upon a thong, and a man with a musket between every. seven. Many of the slaves were ill-conditioned, and a great number of them women. These slaves were going to Morocco, by the way of Ludamar and the Great Desert."[1]
And here it may be observed, that the sufferings endured by the slaves in crossing the Desert of Sahara are described as being even greater than those experienced in the "middle passage" across the Atlantic. "Driven by Arab merchants to the north of Africa, through the deep and burning sands of Sahara, scantily supplied with water, they sink in great numbers under their sufferings. Major Denham and his companions saw, in their journeyings, melancholy proofs of the horrors attending this ‘middle passage' over land. They at one time halted near a. well, around which were lying more than one hundred human skeletons, some of them with the skin still remaining on their bones. ‘They were only blacks,' said the Arabs, when they observed the horror of the travelers; and they began to knock about the limbs and skulls with the butt-ends of their guns. Denham says they counted in another place one hundred and seven skeletons. In other instances they passed sixty or eighty skeletons a-day, scattered along over that dreary waste. — ‘While,' says Denham, ‘I was dozing on
- ↑ Chap. XV.
