The Boy Slaves

I have room only for the theory in its simplest form. The heating of the Saära under a tropical sun; the absence of those influences--moisture and verdure--which repel the heat and retain its opposite; the ascension of the heated air that hangs over this vast tract of desert; the colder atmosphere rushing in from the Atlantic Ocean; the consequent eastward tendency of the waters of the sea.

These facts will account for that current which has proved a deadly maelstrom to hundreds--aye, thousands--of ships, in all ages, whose misfortune it has been to sail unsuspectingly along the western shores of the Ethiopian continent.

Even at the present day the castaways upon this desert shore are by no means rare, notwithstanding the warnings that at close intervals have been proclaimed for a period of th