the meanest Arabs of the Desert they appear degraded-
even below the Negro slave. The succession of hardships;
which they endure from the caprice and tyranny of their
purchasers, without any protecting law to which they can
appeal for alleviation or redress, seems to destroy every
spring of exertion or hope in their minds; they appear
indifferent to everything around them,—abject,servile*and
brutified.
Adams alone was in some respects an exception from,
this description. I do not recollect any ransomed Christian
slave who discovered a greater elasticity of spirit,, or who-
sooner recovered from the indifference and stupor here-
described.
It is to be remarked that the Christian captives are-
invariably worse treated than the idolatrous or Pagan
slaves whom the Arabs, either by theft or purchase, bring,
from the interior of Africa; and that religious bigotry is.
the chief cause of this distinction. The zealous disciples-
of Mohammed consider the Negroes merely as ignorant
unconverted beings, upon whom, by the act of enslaving
them they are conferring a benefit, by placing them within
reach of instruction in the “ true b e l ie f a n d the Negroes
having no hopes of ransom , and being often enslaved when
children, are in general, soon converted to the Mohammedan
faith. The Christians, on the contrary, are looked
upon as hardened infidels, and as deliberate despisers of
the Prophet’s call; and as they in general stedfastly reject
the Mohammedan creed, and at least never embrace it
whilst they have hopes of ransom, the Mooslim, consistently
with the spirit of many passages in the Koran, views them
with the bitterest hatred, and treats them with every insult
and cruelty which a merciless bigotry can suggest.
;It is not to be understood, however, that the Christian
slaves,'though generally ill treated and inhumanly worked
by their Arab owners, are persecuted by them ostensibly
on account of their religion. They, on the contrary, often
-encourage the Christians to resist the importunities of those
who wish to convert them : for, by embracing Islamism the
Christian slave obtains his freedom; and however ardent
may be the zeal of the Arab to make proselytes, it seldom
blinds him to the calculations of self-interest.
A curious instance of the struggle thus excited between
Mohammedan zeal and worldly interest, Was related to me
to have occurred at Wed-Noon, in the case of a boy
belonging to an English vessel which had been wrecked on
the neighbouring coast a short time previous to the
“ Charles/’
This boy had been persuaded to embrace the Moham