"As Ismail Pasha persisted in conversation with his two fellow-Commissioners, that his part of the work had been thoroughly done, and that he was expected at Stamboul, M. Sabatier and Captain Pullen, R.N., set out in the Cyclops, with the English and French flags flying together on the mainmast, and reached Jeddah on October 12th, 1859. Here they found Commodore Seymour with the Pelorus (twenty-one guns); the corvette Assaye (ten guns); and the Chesapeake (fifty-one guns) expected. Five days afterwards, Namik Pasha arrived from Mecca; and, as the Turkish Commissioner had admitted that all the local authorities were accessories to the murder, M. Sabatier proceeded to examine all witnesses, Moslems as well as Christians. Even he, accustomed for long years to the abstruse chicanery of the East, must have been surprised to hear the Turkish authorities laying the blame upon Captain Pullen; as if a mere question of maritime and international law could have borne such fruits. Even he, so well inured to the contempt of European intelligence—which is an article of faith with all Orientals—must have been startled, as well as shocked, to see the abominable Abdullah Muhtásib sitting side by side with Hasan Bey, the wretched commandant of artillery, when the Consulate of France was still a mere shell, and the walls were bespattered with the blood of his fellow-countrymen.
"It would be tedious to relate how bravely and how well M. Sabatier did his duty. Briefly, in January, 1859, Tricoult, capitaine de frégate, appeared upon the stage, and a few hours brought the authorities to their senses. The miserable Ismail Pasha lost his head on 'Raven's Isle,' within sight of Jeddah; Abdullah Muhtásib and the Sayyid el Amúli on the Custom-house square (January 21st, 1859). The fine for the losses of the Christians amounted to 2,241,016 francs, of which 500,000 were paid to the Eveillard family, 100,000 to M. Emérat, and 100,000 to Sabá Mascondi's relatives.
"The Jeddah massacre was made the stalking-horse to bring down slave-trading in the Red Sea, which had already been abolished theoretically (1885) under the effects of the Crimean War. In June, 1869, vizierial letters were addressed especially to the Hejaz, without any effect beyond causing a disturbance; they were essentially dead letters, worth only their weight of spoiled paper. This is not the place for so extensive a subject. I will only state that the traffic still flourishes at Jeddah; that the market, till lately, was under the eyes of the British Consulate; that on representation it was removed a few yards off; that the Turkish authorities, even if they wished, are unable to stop or even to hinder it; and that the only remedy is armed intervention, serious and continued,—in fact, a 'Coffin Squadron,' like that of the Persian Gulf, stationed in the Red Sea, with 'slave approvers' all around the coast of Arabia. I need hardly say that we should demand the right of search, and that a Consul-General or Slave Commissioner, with a sufficient staff and salary, the use of a gunboat, and a roving commission, should be appointed to the Red Sea, independently of the Consul-General of Egypt, and in lieu of the trading Consul of Jeddah.
"M. Sabatier on the occasion omitted only one step, probably because he judged that the hour to take it had not struck. He should have insisted upon Mecca being opened to the world, and upon all travellers being protected there, as they are at Jerusalem and other 'Holy Cities.' It is high time that these obsolete obstructions to the march of civilization should everywhere be swept away; the world will endure them no longer. Mecca is not only a great centre of religion and commerce; it is also the prime source of political intrigues, the very nest where plans of conquest and schemes of revenge upon the Infidel are hatched; and, as I have before said, the focus whence cholera is dispersed over the West. Shall a misplaced sentiment of tolerating intolerance allow her to work in the dark against humanity? Allah forbid it!
India.
[We now change to India.]
"I suppose no one has any idea (and certainly no foreigner has) of the amount of diplomacy or the responsibility incurred by the Viceroy of India. The India House may well be quoted as 'the focus of politics for nearly all Asia, and the storehouse of romance of all the East.' It has to regulate our relations with all the neighbouring foreign Powers beyond the limits of Hindustan, and with the four hundred and sixty dependent Princes and Chiefs within our own Indian Empire.
"I inspected the cotton-mills. It is evident that India must become a manufacturing country, or it can no longer defend its teeming millions from famine. When this great work shall have been done, Great Britain, with one foot on Hindustan and the other in China, will command the cotton and wool manufactures of the world, and be the greatest producing power ever known.