Travels in the Interior of Africa Volume 02 - Mungo Park

Excerpt: ...extends only to reasonable correction; for the master cannot sell his domestic, without having first brought him to a public trial before the chief men of the place. But these restrictions on the power of the master extend not to the care of prisoners taken in war, nor to that of slaves purchased with money. All these unfortunate beings are considered as strangers and foreigners, who have no right to the protection of the law, and may be treated with severity, or sold to a stranger, according to the pleasure of their owners. There are, indeed, regular markets, where slaves of this description are bought and sold, and the value of a slave, in the eye of an African purchaser, increases in proportion to his distance from his native kingdom: for when slaves are only a few days