_ 402 Solon_ was the first to prohibit this commerce in Athens. _Kindlinger_, in his Geschichte der deutschen Hörigkeit, p. 621, speaks of a child promised as a slave before its birth, by its parents, as a species of farm-rent. (See the Edictum Pistense, in _Baluz_, II, 192.) In Chili, the poorest country people who were not entirely white, sold their children in the towns, where they grew up with the families of their masters, and were then kept as servants in a state of semi-serfdom. There is, it is true, no law governing this condition of things. (_Pöppig_, Reise, I, 201 ff.) _ 403 Ritter_, XIII, 727. For instance, men in South America used for the purpose of riding. _M. Chevalier_, Cours, I, 251; _Lœwenstern_, Le Mexique, Souvenirs d’un Voyageur (1843); and _Stephens_, Travels in Yucatan (1841), show how, even yet, in Central America, although the Indians are legally free, yet, by their senseless way of running into debt, a number of legal relations, amounting virtually to _glebæ adscriptio_, arise. But compare, however, _Humboldt_, Neuspanien, IV, 263. This condition of things has been produced in Peru, also, by the payment of one or two years’ wages in advance. (_Pöppig_, Reise, II, 225.) 404 Thus _Forbonnais_, Eléments du Commerce (1854) I, 364, says of trade with savages: _il fait naître dans ces nations le goût du superflu et des commodités, qui multiplie le, échanges et leur donne le goût du travail._ 405 In very uncivilized nations, among whom serfdom is not known, we generally find the slavery of woman and the temporary bondage of the son-in-law in order to secure the daughter in marriage. This is still the case among the Laplanders. _Klemm_, Kulturgeschichte III, p. 54. Slavery was unknown among the Greeks in the very earliest times. _Herod._, VI, 263. _F. A. Wolf_, Darstell. der Afterthumswissenschaft, III, doubts whether any great advance in the higher development of the mind would have been possible without slavery.