The White Slave Trade.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 932, 10 January 1890, Page 4

The White Slave Trade.

Mdme. Paschkoff, who has recently visited the old city of Sinope, on the northern coaßt of Asia Minor, found there (says the New York Sun) a few wealthy Turks, the inmates of whoa© households, she says, are beautiful

women of Circassia. These favourites of the harem are attended not only by black slaves of both sexes from the Soudan, but also by older and less comely women from their own country. All are slaves, bought for trade goods or cash, the more fortunate among them to live in LUXURY AND IDLENESS and the others to perforin the menial services of the household. In spite of Russia’s prohibitions of the white slave trade of Circassia it still seems to flourish. Some year.; ago it was reported that there was such a glue in the Circassian slave-girl market in Constantinople that prices had fallen about threefourths. Mdme. Pasuhkoff has given some attention to the means by whioh the supply of white slaves is maintained. The trade would probably cease entirely were it nob that it is THE HIGHEST AMBITION OF MANY A FAIR

CIRCASSIAN to become an inmate of some luxurious harem far away from her own land. There is among the Circassians an unwritten law l that no girl shall be sold without her consent, and the fact is that many of them are eager to be sold ; and so their fathers do not hesitate long to accept any tempting offer which the agents from the slave marts may make. As Russian subjects Circassian girls have no trouble in journeying under the escort of their purchasers to Batoum, the Black Sea port of the Caucasus. Only one to three are taken there at a time by an agent, and, if need be. they can assume to be members of his family.- In the harem of some important Mahommedans at Batoum ’ THE DESTINATION OF THE GIRL? is decided, and iu very small parties they are taken to one or another market in the dominions of Turkey. It has been a part of the policy of Russia to profess respect for the usages of her Mahommedan subjects. No surveillance worth mentioning is maintained by Russia over the thousands of harems among the Mahommedans of that vast empire. It is, therefore, easy at Batoum to negotiate for the purchase and sale of these girls ; and, ,so long as the trade is quietly conducted, Russiau officials seem to wink at violations of law of which they cannot be ignorant, and thus the harems of Turkey arG still supplied with their chief ornaments.