A pilgrimage to the temples and tombs of Egypt, Nubia, and ...

ARAB MISERY. 127
ing to witness. These Arabs can do nothing
without singing, an exercise of the lungs which
really appears to lighten their labour.
Much, I think, might be done with a people
so happily constituted, were they only well
governed, and treated like human beings instead
of like brutes ; but one of Mohammed All's
favourite dicta is, that if the Fellahs had two
shirts he should not be able to govern them.
Talk of Irish misery! what is it to compare to
Arab misery in Egypt? and the crowning mi-
sery here is the arbitrary conscription, merci-
lessly enforced by the Viceroy, which tears from
their homes to keep up a large standing army,
no longer required, the fathers, husbands, and
sons, whose labours are the sole support of their
famishing families. To disable themselves from
serving as soldiers, the young Fellahs have no
scruple in cutting off the fore-finger of their
right hand, drawing out their front teeth, and
even putting out one of their eyes;* and we
* Before I came to Egypt I had always fancied the account
of Mohammed Ah's having organized a Regiment of one-eyed
soldiers, in order to obviate the practice of his Fellah subjects
putting out one of their eyes to disqualify themselves from
serving, to be a traveller's story. Since I have been here,
however, I not only know such to be the case, but I am led to
wonder how he can ever find materials for forming an entire
regiment of two-eyed men.