Dick Sand forgot his own situation to think only of Mrs.Weldon and hers.
The caravan, camped under the gigantic sycamore, did not count less than eight hundred persons, say five hundred slaves of both sexes, two hundred soldiers, porters, marauders, guards, drivers, agents, or chiefs.
These chiefs were of Arab and Portugese origin.

It would be difficult to imagine the cruelties that these inhuman beings inflicted on their captives.

They struck them without relaxation, and those who fell exhausted, not fit to be sold, were finished with gunshots or the knife.

Thus they hold them by terror.

But the result of this system is, that on the arrival of the caravan, fifty out of a hundred slaves are missing from the trader's list.