DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.12664#0103
96
INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
Lower Egypt; many were sick, and others dying.
They were arranged on board the boats and on
the banks, in separate groups, according to their
state of health. Among them was every variety
of face and complexion, and it was at once start-
ling and painful to note the gradations of man de-
scending to the brute. I could almost see the very
line of separation. Though made in God's image,
there seemed no ray of the divinity within them.
They did not move upon all-fours, it is true, but
they sat, as I had seen them in the slave-market
at Cairo, perfectly naked, with their long arms
wound round their legs, and their chins resting
upon their knees, precisely as we see monkeys,
baboons, and apes ; and as, while looking at these
miserable caricatures of our race, I have some-
times been almost electrified by a transient gleam
of resemblance to humanity, so here I was struck
with the closeness of man's approach to the infe-
rior grade of animal existence. Nor was there
much difference between the sick and well; the
sick were more pitiable, for they seemed doomed
to die, and death to any thing that lives is terrible ;
but the strong and lusty men and women were
bathing in the river; and when they came out they
smeared themselves with oil, and laid their shining
bodies in the sun, and slept like brutes. To such
as these, slavery to the Turk is not a bitter
draught; philanthropists may refine and specu-
late, and liberals declaim, but what is liberty to
men dying for bread, and what hardship is there
INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
Lower Egypt; many were sick, and others dying.
They were arranged on board the boats and on
the banks, in separate groups, according to their
state of health. Among them was every variety
of face and complexion, and it was at once start-
ling and painful to note the gradations of man de-
scending to the brute. I could almost see the very
line of separation. Though made in God's image,
there seemed no ray of the divinity within them.
They did not move upon all-fours, it is true, but
they sat, as I had seen them in the slave-market
at Cairo, perfectly naked, with their long arms
wound round their legs, and their chins resting
upon their knees, precisely as we see monkeys,
baboons, and apes ; and as, while looking at these
miserable caricatures of our race, I have some-
times been almost electrified by a transient gleam
of resemblance to humanity, so here I was struck
with the closeness of man's approach to the infe-
rior grade of animal existence. Nor was there
much difference between the sick and well; the
sick were more pitiable, for they seemed doomed
to die, and death to any thing that lives is terrible ;
but the strong and lusty men and women were
bathing in the river; and when they came out they
smeared themselves with oil, and laid their shining
bodies in the sun, and slept like brutes. To such
as these, slavery to the Turk is not a bitter
draught; philanthropists may refine and specu-
late, and liberals declaim, but what is liberty to
men dying for bread, and what hardship is there