310 HISTORY OF 



improve or degrade the nuptial satisfaction. In those miserable 

 regions, where strength makes the only law, the stronger sex 

 exerts its power, and becomes the tyrant over the weaker : while 

 the inhabitant of Negroland is indolently taking his pleasure in 

 the fields, his wife is obliged to till the ground that serves for 

 their mutual support. It is thus in idl barbarous countries, 

 where the men throw all the laborious duties of life upon the 

 women ; and, regardless of beauty, put the softer sex to those 

 employments that must efTectually destroy it. 



But, in countries that are half barbarous, particularly wher- 

 ever Mahometanism prevails, the men run into the very opposite 

 extreme. Equally brutal with the former, they exert their ty- 

 ranny over the weaker sex, and consider that half of the human 

 creation as merely made to be subservient to the depraved desires 

 of the other. The chief, and, indeed, the only aim of an Asia- 

 tic, is to be possessed of many women ; and to be able to fur- 

 nish a seraglio is the only tendency of his ambition. As the 

 savage was totally regardless of beauty, he on the contrary prizes 

 it too highly ; he excludes the person who is possessed of such 

 personal attractions from any shai'e in the duties or employments 

 of life ; and, as if willing to engross all beauty to himself, in- 

 creases the number of his captives in proportion to the progress 

 of his fortune. In this manner he vainly expects to augment 

 his satisfactions, by seeking from many that happiness which he 

 ought to look for in the society of one alone. He lives a gloomy 

 tyrant amidst wretches of his own making ; he feels none of 

 those endeaimedts which spring from afftction, none of those deli, 

 cacies which arise from knowledge. His mistresses, being shut 

 out from the world, and totally ignorant of all that passes there, 

 have no arts to entertain his mind, or calm his anxieties ; the 

 day passes with them in sullen silence, or languid repose ; appe- 

 tite can furnish but few opportunities of varying the scene ; 

 and all that falls beyond it must be irksome expectation. 



From this avarice of women, if I may be allowed to express if 

 so, has proceeded that jealousy and suspicion which ever attends 

 the miser : hence those low and barbarous methods of keeping 

 the women of those countries guarded, and of making and pro. 

 curing eunuchs to attend them. These unhappy creatures are 

 of two kinds, the white and the black. The white are generally 

 made in the country where they reside, being but partly deprived 



