Aden Had Hitherto Agreed Very Well With Its European Residents.
The
sepoys, servants, and camp-followers, however, had suffered much both
from mental and bodily ailments.
They were deprived of their usual
sources of amusement, and of their accustomed food, and languished
under that home-sickness, which the natives of India feel in a very
acute degree. The greater number of servants were discontented, and
anxious to return to their native country. This natural desire upon
their part was highly resented by their masters, who, instead of
taking the most obvious means of remedying the evil, and employing
the natives of the place, who appeared to be tractable and teachable
enough, abused and threatened to beat the unfortunate people,
convicted of what self-love styles "ingratitude."
In a very clever work, I have seen the whole sum of the miseries of
human life comprised in one word, "servants;" and until we can procure
human beings with all the perfections of our fallen nature, and none
of our faults, to minister to our wants and wishes, the complaint,
so sickening and so general, and frequently so unjust, will be
reiterated. Anglo-Indians, however, seem to be more tormented by these
domestic plagues than any other set of people. The instant a stranger
lands upon Asiatic ground, we hear of nothing else. It is considered
to be polite conversation in the drawing-room, aid delicate-looking
women will listen with the greatest complacence to the most brutal
threats uttered by their male associates against the wretched people
whom hard fate has placed about their persons.
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