Barry, it's very interesting what you have to say about the river and the characteristics of the lead hound. Could you refer me to a source for even more information?

By the by, even where slavery was not racially justified or motivated, there were other justifications which did their own incomparable harm. (I don't believe I want to compare slaveries in any qualitative sense. It doesn;t teach us anything and it's invariably in bad taste.) Ancient Greece is often cited, along similar lines to yours, as a land in which slaves were taken as booty and slavery was somehow less ideologically egregious. In fact, Aristotle said that certain people were natural slaves and he placed them in an entirely different category of (semi-)humans. Race, unfortunately, is not the only way to dehumanize.