I Afterwards Saw A Drunken Englishman, An Officer Of The Indian
Army, I Am Sorry To Say, Beat Several Natives Of Cairo, With Whom
He Happened To Come In Contact In The Crowd, In The Most Brutal And
Unprovoked Manner, And Yet No Notice Was Taken, And No Complaint
Made.
It was certainly something very unexpected to me to see a Frank
Christian maltreating the Moslem inhabitants of a
Moslem city in which
he was a stranger, and I regretted exceedingly that the perpetrator
of acts, which brought disgrace upon his character and country, should
have been an Englishman, or should have escaped punishment. No sooner
have we been permitted to traverse a country in which formerly it was
dangerous to appear openly as a Christian, than we abuse the privilege
thus granted by outrages on its most peaceable inhabitants. I regret
to be obliged to add, that it is but too commonly the habit, of
Englishmen to beat the boat-men, donkey-men, and others of the poorer
class, whom they may engage in their service. They justify this
cowardly practice - cowardly, because the poor creatures can gain no
redress - by declaring that there is no possibility of getting them to
stir excepting by means of the whip; but, in most cases, all that I
witnessed, they were not at the trouble of trying fairer methods:
at once enforcing their commands by blows. The comments made by the
janissary and our own servant upon those who were guilty of such
wanton brutality showed the feeling which it elicited; and when upon
one occasion Miss E. and myself interposed, declaring that we would
not allow any person in our service to be beaten, they told us not to
be alarmed, for that the rais (captain of the boat), who was an Arab,
would not put up with ill-treatment, but had threatened to go on shore
at the next village with all his men.
An English gentleman, long resident in Cairo, had done me the honour
to call upon me on the day after my arrival, and had invited me to
come to his house, to see some mummies and other curiosities he had
collected. Accompanied by two of my female friends, and escorted by a
gentleman who was well acquainted with the topography of the city,
we set out on foot, traversing blind alleys and dark lanes, and thus
obtaining a better idea of the intricacies of the place than we could
possibly have gained by any other means. Sometimes we passed under
covered ways perfectly dark, which I trod, not without fear of
arousing some noxious animal; then we came to narrow avenues, between
the backs of high stone houses, occasionally emerging into small
quadrangles, having a single tree in one corner. We passed a house
inhabited by one of the superior description of Frank residents,
and we knew that it must be tenanted by a European by the handsome
curtains and other furniture displayed through its open windows.
Turning into a street, for the very narrow lanes led chiefly along
the backs of houses, we looked into the lower apartments, the doors of
which were usually unclosed, and here we saw the men at their
ordinary occupations, and were made acquainted with their domestic
arrangements.
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