none came back (1828), except a few miserable sukkat hales (invalided
veterans) who, for a few years, lingered as household guards about
the hareem-door of Ibraheem Pasha at Kasr-ed-Doobara, until the
plague of 1835 (“ quseque ipse miserima vidi”) swept them off.
together with almost all the negro slaves and Nubians (Barhjbera),
then in Lower Egypt.387 During five months that (1828-9) I sojourned
at Navarino and Modon, skeletons of some of these unfortunates,
recognizable by tatters of their uniforms, frequently fell (in
continual rides and shooting excursions) in my way, while graves
of the remainder lay alongside the Modon road for miles. '■
If the opinions of those alone qualified to decide be taken, all
the families of Atalantic, or G-setulian, stock are terrce~geniti.3m
I The Berbers,” says De Slane, “ autochthonous people of northern
Africa, are the same race that is now designated by the name of
Kabtles. This word, which signifies ‘ clan’ [in Arabic, plural
that constitutional change from intelligence and gentleness to stupid ferocity which, in
Egypt, prevents everybody, but Turkish officials who possess soldiery, from keeping adult
negro male slaves in households. Murgicln abjured Christ and turned Muslim, became too restive
for mild control,—and finally (1824), becoming infatuated with a Nizdm-jezebd regiment
of negroes about to embark for the war in the Morea, my father gave him his liberty. He
sailed and, like his comrades, never came back. Four more negro girls were purchased on
my mother’s return to Alexandria (1825) ; .but, being absent in England myself at that
time, I do no.t recollect the names of 3, and they were already free and married off on my
return in June, 1827,— as was the fourth, Barbara, in July of the same year. Her place
was re-filled by a Christian white slave, bought out of compassion from the Turkish soldiery,
in the basaar, when hundreds of Greek captives were ravished from the Morea, to become,
in portion, rescued, through Count de St. Leger and Captain Coddrington, 1828 ; as, indeed,
two others were by myself at Cairo in 1832, and sent home. Our lady’s maid, Pasquala,
free from the hour she touched my father’s threshhold, married out in 1828; and thus in
that year ended our family connection with slavery; although a silly tourist (D r . H o l t
Y a t e s ) , hospitably entertained by my father at Alexandria in 1828-9, has fabricated for
his book an affecting tale about the influence of an “Abyssinian slave girl” over one of my
sisters!
In justice to my parents’ memory I ought to state that, in common with others at that
emancipation-period, they then renounced the further possession of slaves “ for conscience’
sake;”—sentiments in which I never have participated; because I consider it a far more
philanthropic act (whatever “ Eketer-hall ” may think of it), to rescue by purchase any
human being— especially semi-wild negroes, when their humanization is the natural consequence—
from the brutal clutches of the gelldb (slave-fetcher), than either to abandon him
or her amid the horrors of an Oriental slave-mart, or to let him or her run the risk of not
obtaining a better master.
“ So then,” as S t . P a u l (Ep. to the Romans, XIV, 12,—S h a r p e ’s N. T., p. 303) has clearly
expressed it, “ each of us shall give account of himself to God;” nor is the Father accountable,
in this case, for a difference o f ethical opinions in his son.
887 There is a note of mine on this subject in my friend D r . B a r t o n ’s Report of the Sanitary
Commission of New Orleans, 1854. See also N o t t ’s Chap. IV, p. 393, ante.
888 For all former authorities, see G l id d o n , Otia ¿Egyptiaca, 1849, “ Excursus on the
origin of some of the Berber tribes of Nubia and Libya,” pp. 116-46:— and Types of
Mankind, 1854, pp. 180-1, 204-10, 510 “ Ludlm,” to 626.
Kalail], has not been employed to designate the Berbers earlier
than about three centuries. The introduction of this distorted
meaning must probably be attributed to the Turks,”389—who entered
Algiers under Barbarossa at the beginning of the 16th century.
Inasmuch as great confusion prevails yet in the minds of otherwise
well-informed ethnographers upon Berber subjects, and my
object being now to-separate these races of the Hamitic type of
mankind, entirely from any affinity with more austral negro nations,
unknown to the Berbers before the introduction of camels390—a
few extracts from the French “Exploration scientifique de l’Algérie”
391 are here introduced.
The uplands and the aborigines of Berheria (true name for
Barbary) are likened by Carette, in their geological phenomena and
their human vicissitudes, to -an Archipelago subject to rising and
falling tides: “ the scarped islands are the mountainous masses;
the fiat islands are the Oases;393 the secular tides are the invasions.
All these islands represent different groups of the same nation ;
whereas the wave that bathes them is by turns Phoenician, Roman,
Vandal, G-rëek, Arab, Turkish,’’-^-and, at this moment, French.
All these have carried away some Berber, and left some foreign
words. Nevertheless, the old. lingua Atlantiea is still recoverable-;
at the same time (as I have elsewhere indicated) all its words of
moral and intellectual civilization, altogether wanting in Berber,
have been absorbed from the Arabic,—from which the Berber
vocabulary and grammatical construction, by monogenists supposed
to be “ Syro-Arabian,” is now proved to be absolutely distinct.
Under the head of “ Distinctive characteristics of the Berber
tongue,” our Author points out that the strongest difference between
the Arabs and the iKabaiil of Mt. Atlas lies in their languages —
c est la surtout qui en fait deux nations distinctes.” Arabic words,
when adopted by Berbers, undergo great changes, and these people
understand as little-of an Arabic discourse as a French one ; at the
same time that it is easier for an Arab to acquire French than
889 Op. cit.-, preface, p. 1.
890 Amply confirmed, from the latest sources, by V i v i e n d e S t . M a r t in , “ L’Exploration
scientifique de l’Afrique centrale,” Revue Contemporaine, Paris, 15th Sept. 1855, pp. 435-6.
391 “ Pondant les Années 1840, 1841, 1842, publiée par ordre du Gouvernement, et avec
le concours d’un Commission Académique,” 4to, many vols., 1848-53, Paris, Imprimérie
nationale (now impériale). My selections are made chiefly from C a h e t t e , Élude» sur la
Kahilis proprement dite (I, pp. 13, 20-33) ~ Précis historique (pç. 447-62) — and Recherches
sur l'Origine et les migrations des Principales Tribus de l’Afrique Septentrionale, et particulars-
ment de VAlgérie (III, pp. 13-25, 27-55, 301-6, 441, 476).
Lucidly explained from the accounts of R i c h a r d s o n , B a r t h , O v e r w e q , and V o g e l ,
as regards the Tripolitan route over the Sahara, by S t . M a r t in , op. cit., pp. 430-6, 440-6.