Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1879 edition. Excerpt: ... 107 LETTER IX. SLAVERY AS IT IS IN EGYPT, Egypt is fall of slaves. A great deal is written and said now about the hope that the slave traffic may be stopped, but this is a much more difficult thing than people in England have generally any idea of; there are besides the same difficulties which took so much time and trouble in the days of those good men who got the slave-trade abolished in our colonies, other difficulties which I need not enter on here: it is enough to say that there is no Wilberforce to labour and pray for years with his pious friends in the cause of the poor slaves, so I fear the time is not very near for their emancipation. Meanwhile, at all events, Egypt is full of them, as I said before; the cities, in .particular, are teeming with negro slaves. In America (in the Southern States, that is), till the late war, and long ago in our "West Indian Islands, field work was chiefly done by black slaves working in gangs, because white men could not work much in the heat of such climates. But that is not the case here; field labour is mostly done by the " children of the soil," and though a negro shepherd or herdsman is sometimes seen, the chief employment of slaves is as domestic servants. People of moderate fortune keep at least two or three; and, I am sorry to say, Christians quite as much as Moslems. Many who are in a position of life to do their own work keep a negress (who does it very imperfectly), and do nothing themselves. Of course the expense is great; really more than hiring a servant, because there is a large sum paid for the woman at first, and then she has to be fed and clothed, and being generally very wasteful, she costs a good deal. A cook or waiter in an European family will often keep a slave, and let his...
