DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11448#0155
chap, xviii.] RESULTS OF THE CONSCRIPTION.
123
seem masquerading there. The very air is darkened, and rust-
ling with flocks of beautiful turtle-doves, birds of paradise, hoo-
poes, and strange swallows j and, high over all, soar the eagle
and thejiawk on the watch for the living, and the vulture scent-
ing for the dead. Flocks of sheep and goats are browsing about
each village ; troops of wild dogs prowling, camels stalking
along the foot-path, and buffaloes making their eternal rounds in
the waterwheels that irrigate the land.
Amidst all this exuberance of life, man only languishes ; yet
the fecundity of the Egyptian is proverbial. Vainly do the fish
prey on the insects, and the eagle and the hawk on the feathered
tribes ; they multiply notwithstanding ; but man has his tyrant,
whose influence is deadlier far ; and 500,000 souls have withered
from Egypt, within the last ten years, under the blight of con-
scription and oppression. It is not only the loss of men that is
caused by enrolment, battle, and disease ; but, when the Pasha's
pressgangs are out recruiting, whole villages become deserted.
The men fly to the deserts, to escape his odious service, and their
wives and children dare not remain behind them, to meet the
vengeance of the baffled pursuer. In the desert they perish by
thousands ; and when pursuit has passed by, and the man-catch
era have returned to their camp, many a roof remains deserted,
for those who made a home there lie with bleached bones upon
the desert.
The dread of conscription is painfully illustrated in the num-
ber of the maimed you meet everywhere. At least two-thirds
of the male population of Egypt have deprived themselves of
the right eye, or of the fore-finger of the right hand. There
are even professional persons, who go about to poison the eye,
which they do with verdigris, or sew it up altogether. Our
equipment consisted of twelve men; of these only ten were
liable to conscription, and seven of them were either one-eyed or
fore-fingerless.
As we are upon a melancholy subject, I will here relate a
circumstance we witnessed at a village near Minyeh. A man
had been drowned ; his body had been recovered from the river,
and lay upon a mat under the shelter of some palms ; a crowd
of women, with dishevelled hair, were seated round the corpse,
123
seem masquerading there. The very air is darkened, and rust-
ling with flocks of beautiful turtle-doves, birds of paradise, hoo-
poes, and strange swallows j and, high over all, soar the eagle
and thejiawk on the watch for the living, and the vulture scent-
ing for the dead. Flocks of sheep and goats are browsing about
each village ; troops of wild dogs prowling, camels stalking
along the foot-path, and buffaloes making their eternal rounds in
the waterwheels that irrigate the land.
Amidst all this exuberance of life, man only languishes ; yet
the fecundity of the Egyptian is proverbial. Vainly do the fish
prey on the insects, and the eagle and the hawk on the feathered
tribes ; they multiply notwithstanding ; but man has his tyrant,
whose influence is deadlier far ; and 500,000 souls have withered
from Egypt, within the last ten years, under the blight of con-
scription and oppression. It is not only the loss of men that is
caused by enrolment, battle, and disease ; but, when the Pasha's
pressgangs are out recruiting, whole villages become deserted.
The men fly to the deserts, to escape his odious service, and their
wives and children dare not remain behind them, to meet the
vengeance of the baffled pursuer. In the desert they perish by
thousands ; and when pursuit has passed by, and the man-catch
era have returned to their camp, many a roof remains deserted,
for those who made a home there lie with bleached bones upon
the desert.
The dread of conscription is painfully illustrated in the num-
ber of the maimed you meet everywhere. At least two-thirds
of the male population of Egypt have deprived themselves of
the right eye, or of the fore-finger of the right hand. There
are even professional persons, who go about to poison the eye,
which they do with verdigris, or sew it up altogether. Our
equipment consisted of twelve men; of these only ten were
liable to conscription, and seven of them were either one-eyed or
fore-fingerless.
As we are upon a melancholy subject, I will here relate a
circumstance we witnessed at a village near Minyeh. A man
had been drowned ; his body had been recovered from the river,
and lay upon a mat under the shelter of some palms ; a crowd
of women, with dishevelled hair, were seated round the corpse,