[...] the slave-market, the latter peculiarly disgusting. The slaves were mostly girls: some from Circassia were well dressed; others, negroes, squatted on the ground, with scanty bits of matting thrown round them, and in a sun that would have killed a European. It was altogether a sickening sight, and I left it proud that I belonged to a nation that had abolished slavery
—Painter David Roberts to his daughter Christine about the Cairo Slave Marlet
Thus ordered the procession begins, and passes through the market-place and the principle streets... when any of them strikes a spectator's fancy the line immediately stops, and a process of examination ensues, which, for minuteness, is unequalled in any cattle market in Europe. The intending purchaser having ascertained there is no defect in the faculties of speech, hearing, etc., that there is no disease present, next proceeds to examine the person; the mouth and the teeth are first inspected and afterwards every part of the body in succession, not even excepting the breasts, etc., of the girls, many of whom I have seen handled in the most indecent manner in the public market by their purchasers; indeed there is every reasons to believe that the slave-dealers almost universally force the young girls to submit to their lust previous to their being disposed of. From such scenes one turns away with pity and indignation.
—Thomas Smee, commander of the Ternate, about the Zanzibar slave market on 1811
The slave market lies on the spaceport side of the famous Plaza of Liberty, facing the hill crowned by the still more famous Praesidium of the Sargon
