LETTER XXXIX.
The solicitude of my guide for my safety was the earnestness of a man of business zealous to discharge with the utmost punctuality the duty he had undertaken; and I must observe to you, that the whole of his conduct evinced a precision and punctuality of dealing rarely found in our intercourse with mankind. Previous, to leaving Aleppo, he had undertaken to convey me safe—he was, as you may already perceive, indefatigable and unremitting in his endeavours to do so; he had promised to supply me with food—so he did, in the most ample manner; he promised to go as I pleased, fast or slow—so he did; he promised to change horses with me, as often as I thought proper to desire—he did so. But beyond this, he seemed to carry his care of me no farther than to any bale of goods he might have in his charge. He was bound to deliver me safe, in good order and condition, at Bagdad: so much he was determined to do, and no more did he think of. I had got letters to the Bashaws of some of the towns through which we were to pass: but as the delivery of a letter is, according to the custom of that country, always accompanied with a present, I thought it better to decline delivering them, except when necessity compelled—though the state of the country was so unsettled, that we often had occasion for a guard.
As soon as the remembrance of the laughing affair was a little decayed, the Tartar began to relax into good humour, and to talk with his usual vehemence; for he was always, according to the flow of his spirits, either sullenly silent or extravagantly loquacious. His tongue might be considered as a thermometer, by which the warmth or coldness of his temper might be calculated, and the extremes of garrulity and taciturnity were the indices. His conversation, however, was very circumscribed, and consisted chiefly of stories of himself and his horse, the amazing journeys he made, and the feats of manhood he performed. One circumstance I must in justice mention, as I think it marks strongly the habitual delicacy and modesty of this people. Although he frequently lamented my banishment from my family, and although we were for eighteen days continually conversing on a variety of occasions that might lead to the subject, he never once talked of women; never, in all his pity for my situation, glanced even remotely at the possibility of my getting a substitute in that way; never hinted that he thought of them himself. On seeing women coming to the wells, they reminded me of some of the stories in the Old Testament. I mentioned it, but it went no farther; for whenever the subject was started, he threw cold water on it.
That he conceived me to be in some respects a parcel of property, I have good reason to believe: for I observed that, at some caravanseras the people collected round me, and regarded me with strong symptoms of surprise and pity; some viewed me with commiseration, some with contempt; but not one creature, however wretched or abject, seemed to envy my situation.
I was the more confirmed in this opinion by an incident that happened between Diarbeker and Mosul. One morning I was unusually overcome with the fatigues of the preceding day: the Tartar called me, summoned me to horse; and finding that I gave no answer, nor shewed any token of awaking, he lifted me in his arms bodily from my couch (such was his strength that he did it without any difficulty), carried me out without the least ceremony, and, before I was so completely awake as to be sensible of my situation, had me fixed upon a horse ready to depart.
A transaction so very singular, you may well conclude, surprised me at the time, and would not readily be forgotten: such a crowd of strange, confused, and incongruous thoughts and sensations as occurred to me, I never before experienced: they were painful, they were surprising—but I was in such a state that I could not afterwards analyse them. The chief reflection that arose from it was, that human sentiment must be in a deplorable state of degradation indeed, when such a circumstance could occur from the notion that a man was as much an asset or piece of property, could be transferred by the same means, and moved in the same unfeeling manner, as any portion of inert matter that makes up a bale of merchandize. Of the truth of this position I had soon after a melancholy proof, in an incident which, though lamentable, was attended with such ludicrous circumstances, that even now I never think of it without smiling—smiling, as I did then, with a heart bleeding with pity.
One morning I was awakened before day-break with a bustle in the caravansera where we lodged. I conjectured that the Tartar was preparing to get forward, and rose in order to lose no time. I was so far right in my conjectures: the horses were ready, and I came out to mount, and was very much surprised to perceive several horses before me loaded with something which stood erect from their backs, and which I had barely light to discern were not men. I concluded that they were bales of merchandize packed in a particular form, and asked no questions till full day-light disclosed to me that they were human creatures tied up in sacks, and fastened astride on the horses’ backs. There was a strange union of horror and oddity in the conception, that struck me at once with a mixed emotion of indignation, pity, and mirth.—The former however got the better, and I asked my servant with some warmth what it meant.—He said that the sacks contained some young women whom the Tartar had bought.—“Good God!” said I, “is it possible that he can have bought wretched females to treat them with so little tenderness?” “He has bought them,” returned my servant, “in the way of traffic, not for pleasure.”
“Suppose he has,” said I, “suppose even they were men, not to mention young women, how can he imagine that they will survive this? Tied up and sweltered in a sack—fastened cross-legs on a horse, and driven at such an amazing rate (for by this time we had set forward, and another Tartar was whipping the horses up all the time, and driving them on)—how is it possible they can survive? They must be smothered—they must be shattered to pieces—they must be stripped, excoriated, and tortured to death!”
“If I might presume to advise,” said he, “I would say that you had better make no remarks upon it: it would only get them perhaps worse treated, and raise his anger against you.”
To conclude, I took his advice, and kept my mind to myself. The unfortunate women were in this manner carried fifty miles, at the end of which their tender-hearted purchaser disposed of them in some way of keeping till his return; when I suppose they were to be carried back in sacks astride upon horses, all the way to Aleppo, there to be sold to the highest bidder.
To us, my Frederick, who live in a country where an hour’s detention in a house against our will is punished as unlawful imprisonment, and who feel and value the rich treasure of liberty above all earthly blessings, the bare idea of slavery appears horrible; when the miseries of slavery are sharpened by cruelty, our indignation burns at the offence: but such a complicated piece of enormity as that I have mentioned, almost transcends belief, and indignation is lost in amazement. There are but few men, even in our bracing climate, whom fifty miles riding would not shake to pieces, and torture almost to death. No woman would think of it. But when to that is superadded, first the compulsion—then the sorry and at best painful equipage of the horses—the tender persons, unaccustomed to riding, of the women—the smothering heat of the sack—and above all the horrid climate, burning with an almost vertical heat (vertical at least compared with our oblique sun)—it will be allowed to be a wonder, almost approaching to a miracle, that they survived one half of their journey. The wonder-working hand of Omnipotence alone could bring them through it; and when I asked in the evening whether they were dying or dead, and was told that they were not only alive but in perfect health, I could not help repeating that most beautiful expression put into the mouth of Maria by the inimitable Sterne, “God tempers the wind to the side of the shorn lamb.”
This affair tended to prejudice me strongly against my Tartar guide, and it[it] was for some time that I could not look upon him without horror: but at length my resentment abated; and reason, resuming her seat of cool decision, told me, that though it was a crime and a grievous one, he was not so responsible for it as those who, knowing better, authorised it by their concurrence, gave it the sanction of law, and made it familiarly practised; he only did that which he had been even from his mother’s breast instructed to do, and should therefore not be judged by those rules which a Briton would lay down for the government of such cases.
A Briton!—Hold! Have I not now been uttering a most severe satire upon the British Nation? Yes! imputing to men a virtue which they want, is the worst kind of satire—I meant it not at the time, but will not retract what I have written—Britons deserve the lash of satire! They deserve a worse lash: for the traffic in human bodies still stands a bloody brand of infamy on her great National Councils. Their brothers’ blood! the blood of millions of murdered Africans, like that of Abel, cries to Heaven against them, and will not, I fear, cry in vain.
Great God!—What a horrible thought!—what an indelible stigma! that a Legislator shall, in the cold blood of commerce, make a calculation of the probable profit upon human lives—put commercial expediency in the balance against murder—and make convenience the excuse for crime!—Why, the robber may do so!—But shall Britons, generous Britons, who boastful claim precedence of the world in freedom, humanity, and justice—shall they look on and see inferior nations spurning from them with horror the debasing traffic; and stimulated by avarice, or misled by wicked policy, retain the blot that other States have wiped away, and live at once the curse of one part, and the scorn of the rest of mankind?—Forbid it Mercy! Forbid it Heaven!—And oh! may that virtuous man, who, disdaining the malignant taunts of the base and interested, boldly steps forth the advocate of man and of his country, and session after session springs from the couch of repose which opulence presents him, to break the fetters and the scourges which improbity and avarice have forged for our fellow creatures—may he succeed and bear down all his opposers! and may the justice of his country make his triumph and his glory as certain and complete here, as the justice of that Being, under whose direction he acts, will doubtless make them hereafter!