"In this conviction I addressed my Government (February 7th, 1881) a letter upon the detestable traffic in eunuchs. All forms of slavery are as contrary to the spirit of El-Islam as to that of Christianity, but Mohammed especially forbade the employment of unsexed men, lest a demand be thereby created (Hidayah, vol. iv. p. 121). Article IV. of the Anglo-Egyptian Convention rightly punishes the offence with death; and no one would regret to see the murderer hanged when a boy dies under the mutilating razor. Yet it is calculated that not less than eight thousand of these unfortunates are annually imported into Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey. As a rule, the 'Tawashi' are now an obsolete article of luxury, used to sit at the doors of wealthy Beys and Pashas, and to escort 'Harems' when driving out. "The foci of the supply are the Soudan, Nubia, Abyssinia, Kordofan, and Dar-Fur, especially the Messalmiyeh district. One of the frontier towns is called Towasheh (eunuchs), from the infamous traffic there conducted by Moslem 'Fakih,' or religious teachers.[9] Many are emasculated in the district between Majarah, or Majarash, and the port of Masáwwah. There are also shambles at Mbadr, near the harbour of Tajurrah, where Yusuf Bey, the Governor, last year unsexed some forty boys, including the brother of a hostile African Chief. All these places are now Egyptian. "The nature of the subject forbids details in pages intended for the public eye; but, in communicating with my Government, I have been as explicit as decency permits, and my description makes the blood run cold. The subjects range between four and ten; if this operation be performed on older boys, they seldom survive. At the age of ten the loss may be seventy per cent., and even in the case of younger children about one-fourth, to state a low figure, die from the razor. By this murderous operation, boys who would fetch from £5 to £10 rise in value to £25 and £80. Here, then, the manumission might well begin. All eunuchs should be set free without compensation to the owners, who have broken the Commandments of their own Lawgiver by purchasing them; and the extreme penalty of the Convention should be carried out in the cases of notorious mutilators, who have slain literally their hundreds.[10] "The foregoing pages prove, if they prove anything, that the Egyptian Government has done what it could, in fact what we may characterize as its best, and has failed; that when the course of slave importation is blocked upon the Nile, or the desert, it shifts to the Red Sea, or _vice versâ_; that the stowing away of 'chattels' in the various oases greatly increases their miseries; and that the numbers imported and the prices ruling in 1880 do not materially differ from those of 1873.