A good season for a party of a hundred and fifty men should produce
about two hundred cantars (20,000 lbs.) of ivory, valued at Khartoum at
4,000 pounds. The men being paid in slaves, the wages should be nil, and
there should be a surplus of four or five hundred slaves for the
trader's own profit--worth on an average five to six pounds each.
The boats are accordingly packed with a human cargo, and a portion of
the trader's men accompany them to the Soudan, while the remainder of
the party form a camp or settlement in the country they have adopted,
and industriously plunder, massacre, and enslave, until their master's
return with the boats from Khartoum in the following season, by which
time they are supposed to have a cargo of slaves and ivory ready for
shipment. The business thus thoroughly established, the slaves are
landed at various points within a few days' journey of Khartoum, at
which places are agents, or purchasers; waiting to receive them with
dollars prepared for cash payments. The purchasers and dealers are, for
the most part, Arabs. The slaves are then marched across the country to
different places; many to Sennaar, where they are sold to other dealers,
who sell them to the Arabs and to the Turks. Others are taken immense
distances to ports on the Red Sea, Souakim, and Masowa, there to be
shipped for Arabia and Persia.
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