654 Report on the State of Agriculture 



but the ordinary passage is from Marseilles, which occupies 

 fourteen or fifteen days, including stoppages, and costs for each 

 passenger 24/. Letters between London and Alexandria arrive in 

 from seventeen to nineteen days, and cost about 2s. each. We 

 mention these prices, because we have no doubt some young gar- 

 dener will be disposed to offer his services to Mr. Traill, whom 

 from our personal knowledge, we can state to be a most excel- 

 lent man much attached to Egypt. The accounts of the slave 

 trade and slave hunts are horrible. The natives are burned out 

 of their hiding places, like wasps or foxes ; or caught by snares 

 or traps, like game or vermin. For the sake of impressing on 

 the reader's mind the incalculable blessings of civilisation, we 

 make the following quotation, though we admit that it is some- 

 what foreign from the subject of gardening. 



" As the pay of the troops was often in arrear, they generally showed no 

 little activity in capturing the negroes, on whose sale they were to depend for 

 the settlement of their claims ; and there is sufficient evidence that horrible 

 atrocities are frequently committed in the capture of slaves. In some cases, 

 where the blacks had retreated to caves and caverns, fires of straw and brush- 

 wood have been kindled at the entrance in order to force them out by fear of 

 suffocation. Resistance leads to frays in which much blood is shed ; but, 

 generally, the poor slaves are seized by men in ambuscade, from their mothers 

 when in the fields, from small parties of blacks who are surprised or waylaid 

 by the soldiery, or by individual acts of kidnapping. Wars are entered upon 

 for the purpose of making prisoners to be sold as slaves ; the quarrels of petty 

 communities are engaged in for the sake of handing over the weaker party to 

 tiiejellab or slave dealer. Sometimes the strong sell the weak, even of the 

 same tribe; in a word, there is no crime which is not committed on the spots 

 where the slave trade has its birth." (^Report, ^c, p. 83.) 



So brutal is the usage of the negroes after they are captured, 

 that it is estimated that 30 per cent perish in the first ten days 

 after seizure. The facts related by Dr. Bowring on this head 

 are fearful. In estimating the positive suffering, however, we 

 must make allowance for the different state of feeling among a 

 people so degraded ; even the memory of these people is so little 

 cultivated, that it only reaches back a few years, and their future 

 prospects of life are so limited, that they have scarcely any 

 thoughts which reach beyond a few days or weeks. Nevertheless 

 they are " almost invariably fierce religious fanatics." The Pacha 

 seems favourable to the abolition of the slave trade, but he does 

 not appear to have taken any active measures against it. 



" Hatching of Eggs, ■ — From fifteen to twenty millions of chickens are 

 annually hatched in Egypt by artificial heat. One chicken is given for two 



" Misdirectmi of Labour. — The misdirection and waste of labour in the 

 .Levant are very great ; thought is seldom associated with the ordinary 

 occupations of life. If rubbish is to be removed, for example, a large portion 

 will be spilt from the baskets or carriages into which it is thrown ; if timber- 

 work is to be repaired, little attention is paid to the fitting of the various 

 parts ; seldom is a room made air-tight, either from the door or windows ; 

 seldom is a staircase found in which the steps are of equal heights. " 



