It would be easy to adorn this subject with many a flower of description; the atrocities of the capture, the brutalities of the purchase, the terrors of the middle-passage, and the horrors to which the wretches are exposed when entering half-civilized lands. It was usual to throw the slaves overboard when the fatal symptom, coprophagism, appeared amongst them. A single Dau (Dow) belonging to the late Prince Khalid lost when running a course 500 slaves by sickness, and by the falling of the pont-flottant or flying-deck—many a desperate naval action could not show such a butcher’s bill. A certain Charles L—— —, a kiln-dried Mauritius man, crucified seven negroes in terrorem: two were fastened outside the ship, the others were nailed by the feet to the deck, and by the hands to capstan bars, lashed across the masts. With a lighted tar-barrel in an empty boat he nearly caused the loss of an English cruiser, and when she was well on the reef he let off rockets and saluted her. Another man, a Spaniard, finding his ventures likely to die of dysentery, sewed them up before he sent them to the bazar; this slaver made an act of contrition before he died, and severely blamed his bowie-knife. Sensational paragraphs, however, are not wanted by those to whom the subject is familiar, and they are likely to mislead the many who are not. I shall return to the subject of slavery in another chapter. Thence we entered the Malagash Quarter, where the land belongs chiefly to Sayyid Sulayman bin Hamed, a former Governor of Zanzibar; he is said to be so wealthy that he ignores the extent of his means. Here is the Lal Bazar, the very centre of prostitution, an Agapemone of some twenty Cyprians: all are Wasawahili—the Indian women, who appear almost European in complexion and features, having now left. Their faces like skinned apes, and lean legs encased in red silk tights, make their appearance revolting as their society is dangerous. Some of them cool the orbits of the eyes by a kind of loup of perfumed turmeric, whose golden tint causes the outer darkness to gloom extra sooty; others apply curry-coloured dabs to the woolly hair. Sundry of these patches are frontlets or medicines applied to the temples. In former days we used, for instance, ‘rose-water and vinegar, with a little woman’s milk, and nutmegs grated upon a rose cake,’ and the Jews are said to have smeared themselves with Christian blood.