The statistics of the slave-trade are difficult to obtain with absolute accuracy, but an adequate approximation may be reached. It is safe to say that the annual export of slaves from the country lying between the Red Sea and the Great Desert is twenty-five thousand a year, distributed as follows: From Abyssinia, carried to Jaffa or Gallabat, ten thousand; issuing by other routes of Abyssinia, five thousand; by the Blue Nile, three thousand; by the White Nile, seven thousand. To obtain these twenty-five thousand slaves and sell them in market, more than fifteen thousand are annually killed, and often the mortality reaches the terrible figure of fifty thousand. It is a fair estimate that fifty thousand children are stolen from their parents every year. Of the number forced into slavery, fifteen thousand being boys and ten thousand girls, it is found that about six thousand go to Lower Egypt, two thousand are made soldiers, nine thousand concubines, five hundred eunuchs, five thousand cooks or servants, while ten thousand eventually die from the climate, and three thousand obtain their papers of freedom. They are dispersed over three million square miles of territory, and their blood finally mingles with that of the Turk, the Arab, and the European. The best black soldiers are recruited from the Dinkas, who are strong, handsome Negroes, the finest of the White Nile. The other races are thickly built and clumsy, and are never ornamental; the Abyssinians, for whatever service and of whatever class, excel all their rival victims in slavery. They are quiet and subdued, and seldom treacherous or insubordinate. They prefer slavery, many of them, to freedom, because they have no aspirations that are inordinate. The girls are delicate, and not built for severe labor. Though born and bred in a country where concubines are as legitimate and as much honored as wives, they revolt against the terrors of polygamy.