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

TAXATION. 189
country, attesting his veracity, and declaring from
his own experience that his book is the best
one of reference to which any traveller in Abys-
sinia can have recourse. Monsieur d'Arnault's
account of the varieties of the human race that
he met with in the course of his travels, was most
interesting. As he proceeded southward from
the White Nile, he found the country become
more wretched and inappropriate to cultivation,
and in the same proportion the human race has
degenerated there down to its lowest level. And
again as the country improves, he observed that
mankind ascended in the scale of moral and phy-
sical qualifications, and even the colour became
less intensely black. The account he gives is
melancholy, of the way in which Mohammed All
grinds down the populations of the countries
under his dominion, and of the blind policy that
leads him to drive them to despair and destruc-
tion in order to extort from them the taxes to
which he has rendered them liable. If no money
is to be obtained from them, their property is
seized ;
if no property exists, the Viceroy's agents
fall upon the nearest relations of the defaulter
in short, the system amounts to one of extermi-
nation, and fully—I cannot say satisfactonlj/—ex-
plains the visible decrease of population that
: