“I have a son of my house,” says the Moor from the Atlas, with a burst of confidence quite surprising.  “He is my only one, and must have a playfellow, so I am here to buy.  In these days it is not easy to get what one wants.  Everywhere the French.  The caravans come no longer from Tuat—­because of the French.  From Timbuctoo it is the same thing.  Surely Allah will burn these people in a fire of more than ordinary heat—­a furnace that shall never cool.  Ah, listen to the prices,” The little girl’s market-value has gone to forty-four dollars—­say seven pounds ten shillings in English money at the current rate of exchange.  It has risen two dollars at a time, and Tsamanni cannot quite cover his satisfaction.  One girl, aged fourteen, has been sold for no less than ninety dollars after spirited bidding from two country kaids; another, two years older, has gone for seventy-six.

“There is no moderation in all this,” says the Atlas Moor, angrily.  “But prices will rise until our Lord the Sultan ceases to listen to the Nazarenes, and purges the land.  Because of their Bashadors we can no longer have the markets at the towns on the coasts.  If we do have one there, it must be held secretly, and a slave must be carried in the darkness from house to house.  This is shameful for an unconquered people.”

I am only faintly conscious of my companion’s talk and action, as he bids for child after child, never going beyond forty dollars.  Interest centres in the diminishing crowd of slaves who still follow the dilals round the market in monotonous procession.

The attractive women and strong men have been sold, and have realised good prices.  The old people are in little or no demand; but the auctioneers will persist until closing time.  Up and down tramp the people nobody wants, burdens to themselves and their owners, the useless, or nearly useless men and women whose lives have been slavery for so long as they can remember.  Even the water-carrier from the Sus country, who has been jingling his bright bowls together since the market opened, is moved to compassion, for while two old women are standing behind their dilal, who is talking to a client about their reserve price, I see him give them a free draught from his goat-skin water-barrel, and this kind action seems to do something to freshen the place, just as the mint and the roses of the gardeners freshen the alleys near the Kaisariyah in the heart of the city.  To me, this journey round and round the market seems to be the saddest of the slaves’ lives—­worse than their pilgrimage across the deserts of the Wad Nun, or the Draa, in the days when they were carried captive from their homes, packed in panniers upon mules, forced to travel by night, and half starved.  For then at least they were valued and had their lives before them, now they are counted as little more than the broken-down mules and donkeys left to rot by the roadside.  And yet this, of course, is a purely Western opinion, and must be discounted accordingly.