Читать книгу A Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Addressed to the freeholders and other inhabitants of Yorkshire онлайн

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Predatory expeditions very common.

“These plundering excursions are very common, and the inhabitants of different communities watch every opportunity of undertaking them.”—“They always,” as Mr. Parke adds, “produce speedy retaliation; and when large parties cannot be collected for this purpose, a few friends will combine together, and advance into the enemy’s country, with a view to plunder, or carry off the inhabitants.” (Note, vide, pa. ssss1). Thus hereditary feuds are excited and perpetuated between different nations, tribes, villages, and even families, each waiting but for the favourable occasion of accomplishing it’s revenge. Such is the picture of the Interior of Africa, as it is given by one who penetrated much further inland than any other modern traveller, and of whom it must be at least confessed, that he was not disposed to exaggerate the evils produced by the Slave Trade.

Sources of supply continued.

Village-breaking.

In another part of the country, we learn from the most respectable testimony, a practice prevails called Village-breaking. It is precisely the Tegria of Mr. Parke, with this difference, that though often termed making war, it is acknowledged to be practised for the express purpose of obtaining victims for the Slave market. It is carried on, sometimes by armed parties of individuals; sometimes by the soldiers of the petty kings and chieftains, who, perhaps in a season of drunkenness, the consequences of which when recovered from the madness of intoxication they have themselves often most deeply deplored, are instigated to become the plunderers and destroyers of those very subjects whom they were bound to protect. The village is attacked in the night; if deemed needful, to increase the confusion, it is set on fire, and the wretched inhabitants, as they are flying naked from the flames, are seized and carried into slavery. This practice, especially when conducted on a smaller scale, is called panyaring; |Panyaring, or kidnapping.| for the practice has long been too general not to have created the necessity of an appropriate term. It is sometimes practised by Europeans, especially when the ships are passing along the coast, or when their boats, in going up the rivers, can seize their prey without observation; in short, whenever there is a convenient opportunity of carrying off the victims, and concealing the crime: and the unwillingness which the natives universally shew to venture into a ship of war, until they are convinced it is not a Slave ship, contrasted with the freedom and confidence with which they then come on board, is thus easily accounted for^[5]. But these depredations are far more commonly perpetrated by the natives on each other; and on a larger or a smaller scale, according to the power and number of the assailants, and the resort of ships to the coast, it prevails so generally, as, throughout the whole extent of Africa, to render person and property utterly insecure.