Strolling about the
market-place I came in contact with a fellow dressed in a turban
and dirty blue linen robes and trowsers. He bore a bundle of
papers in his hand, one of which he offered to me. I asked him who
he was.
"Arap," he replied.
He had a dark, cunning, roguish countenance, with small eyes, and
had all the appearance of a Jew. I spoke to him in what Arabic I
could command on a sudden, and he jabbered to me in a corrupt
dialect, giving me a confused account of a captivity which he had
undergone amidst savage Mahometans. At last I asked him what
religion he was of.
"The Christian," he replied.
"Have you ever been of the Jewish?" said I.
He returned no answer save by a grin.
I took the paper, gave him a penny, and then walked away. The
paper contained an account in English of how the bearer, the son of
Christian parents, had been carried into captivity by two Mahometan
merchants, a father and son, from whom he had escaped with the
greatest difficulty.
"Pretty fools," said I, "must any people have been who ever stole
you; but oh what fools if they wished to keep you after they had
got you!"
The paper was stuffed with religious and anti-slavery cant, and
merely wanted a little of the teetotal nonsense to be a perfect
specimen of humbug.
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