I had some conversation with my Moorish friends respecting the abolition of slavery.  An old doctor observed, “The English are not more humane than other nations, but God has decreed that they should destroy the slave-trade among the Christians.  This, however, is no praise to them, for they could not resist acting according to the will and mind of God.  As for the Mussulmen, what they do is for the benefit of slaves, especially females, who, one and all, are doomed to death; [29] but, when purchased by the slave-dealers, their lives are spared, and they are made True Believers.  Still, the Mussulmen would assist the English in destroying the ships which carry slaves;” (as if the Moors had any fleet).

The number of slaves in this city is from eight hundred to one thousand.  It is difficult to ascertain any thing like the exact number, the opulent Moors having many negress slaves, with whom they live in a state of concubinage.  Young, rich, and fashionable Moors, I was told for the first time in a Mahommedan country, have become disgusted with the old habit of managing and taking a wife early, and adopt the immoral practice of buying female slaves, by which they avoid, as they say, the trouble and expense of marrying females of their own rank in Moorish society.  A good Mussulman must however, marry once in his life.  Slaves are imported via Wadnoun from Timbuctoo and Soudan, and even from the western coast.  Negroes of the Timbuctoo market are more esteemed than those of Guinea, being a stronger and more laborious race.  The common price of a slave in Mogador is from 60 to 90 ducats; one day a beautiful African girl, freshly exported from the interior, was sold for 160 ducats, or about L20 sterling.  This is considered an extraordinary high price.

Slaves are sold by criers about the streets in Morocco, and most towns, and not in bazaars, as in the East.  But the most remarkable feature of slavery in this part of the world, is the Christian or European slavery carried further south, in the regions extending on the line of coast below Wadnoun, and the adjacent Sahara.  Something like a regular system of Christian slavery is there going on, whilst its head-quarters are not more than five or six days’ journey from this residence of the European Consuls.  This white slavery consists in seizing shipwrecked sailors, numbers being fishermen from the Canary Islands.  We know little about these poor captives, although we are so near Wadnoun, and are continually trading with Sous and this country.  Mr. Davidson casually mentions them in his journal.

It is a settled and religious practice of merchants to keep Europeans ignorant of the south and the Desert; we only hear of these captives now and then, when one escapes, and after being bought and sold by a hundred different masters, is fortunate enough to be redeemed; of his companions in shipwreck, the escaped captive rarely knows anything.  They are gone:  they are either drowned near the coast, plundered and massacred,