As Subjects They Offer A
Favourable Contrast To Their Kindred, The Arabs Of El Yemen, A Race
Untameable As The Wolf, And Which, Subjugated In Turn By Abyssinian,
Persian, Egyptian, And Turk, Has Ever Preserved An Indomitable Spirit Of
Freedom, And Eventually Succeeded In Skaking Off The Yoke Of Foreign
Dominion.
For half a generation we have been masters of Aden, filling
Southern Arabia with our calicos and rupees--what is the present state of
affairs there?
We are dared by the Bedouins to come forth from behind our
stone walls and fight like men in the plain,--British _proteges_ are
slaughtered within the range of our guns,--our allies' villages have been
burned in sight of Aden,--our deserters are welcomed and our fugitive
felons protected,--our supplies are cut off, and the garrison is reduced
to extreme distress, at the word of a half-naked bandit,--the miscreant
Bhagi who murdered Capt. Mylne in cold blood still roams the hills
unpunished,--gross insults are the sole acknowledgments of our peaceful
overtures,--the British flag has been fired upon without return, our
cruizers being ordered to act only on the defensive,--and our forbearance
to attack is universally asserted and believed to arise from mere
cowardice. Such is, and such will be, the character of the Arab!
The Sublime Porte still preserves her possessions in the Tahamah, and the
regions conterminous to Yemen, by the stringent measures with which
Mohammed Ali of Egypt opened the robber-haunted Suez road.
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