DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.12664#0055
48
INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
slave-market. It is situated nearly in the centre
of the city, as it appeared to me, although, after
turning half a dozen corners in the narrow streets
of a Turkish city, I will defy a man to tell where
he is exactly. It is a large old building, enclosing
a hollow square, with chambers all around, both
above and below. There were probably five or
six hundred slaves sitting on mats in groups of ten,
twenty, or thirty, each belonging to a different pro-
prietor. Most of them were entirely naked,
though some, whose shivering forms evinced that
even there they felt the want of their native burn-
ing sun, were covered with blankets. They were
mostly from Dongola and Sennaar; but some
were Abyssinians, with yellow complexions, fine
eyes and teeth, and decidedly handsome. The
Nubians were very dark, but with oval, regularly-
formed, and handsome faces, mild and amiable ex-
pressions, and no mark of the African except the
colour of their skin. The worst spectacle in the ba-
zar was that of several lots of sick, who were
separated from the rest and arranged on mats by
themselves; their bodies thin and shrunken, their
chins resting upon their knees, their long lank
arms hanging helplessly by their sides, their faces
haggard, their eyes fixed with a painful vacancy,
and altogether presenting the image of man in his
most abject condition. Meeting them on their na-
tive sands, their crouching attitudes, shrunken
jaws, and rolling eyes, might have led one to mis-
take them for those hideous animals the orang-
INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
slave-market. It is situated nearly in the centre
of the city, as it appeared to me, although, after
turning half a dozen corners in the narrow streets
of a Turkish city, I will defy a man to tell where
he is exactly. It is a large old building, enclosing
a hollow square, with chambers all around, both
above and below. There were probably five or
six hundred slaves sitting on mats in groups of ten,
twenty, or thirty, each belonging to a different pro-
prietor. Most of them were entirely naked,
though some, whose shivering forms evinced that
even there they felt the want of their native burn-
ing sun, were covered with blankets. They were
mostly from Dongola and Sennaar; but some
were Abyssinians, with yellow complexions, fine
eyes and teeth, and decidedly handsome. The
Nubians were very dark, but with oval, regularly-
formed, and handsome faces, mild and amiable ex-
pressions, and no mark of the African except the
colour of their skin. The worst spectacle in the ba-
zar was that of several lots of sick, who were
separated from the rest and arranged on mats by
themselves; their bodies thin and shrunken, their
chins resting upon their knees, their long lank
arms hanging helplessly by their sides, their faces
haggard, their eyes fixed with a painful vacancy,
and altogether presenting the image of man in his
most abject condition. Meeting them on their na-
tive sands, their crouching attitudes, shrunken
jaws, and rolling eyes, might have led one to mis-
take them for those hideous animals the orang-