1835.] Notes of a Tour through Palestine. 449 



was most unwilling to come to this conclusion, but the evidence is so 

 positive I cannot help it. He has drained the population of Egypt, 

 (which was 2,500,000) by continual conscriptions to keep up his regu- 

 lar army of 90,000 men, exclusive of some 20 or 30,000 for his fleet 

 and arsenals, and of those he has seized to labor in his manufactories. 

 So dreaded has this demand for men become, that the peasants now 

 maim themselves to be exempted from service. In the whole of Upper 

 Egypt, I could not find a single ryot who had not put out an eye, cut 

 off a finger, or broken out a dozen teeth ; even children of 10 and 12 

 years old are maimed. I speak soberly and in strict truth when I say, 

 that during four days' sail down the Nile, I landed frequently, and took 

 long walks, asking every individual I met, and I only found one not 

 maimed, and he was born deaf and dumb ! The aspect of the country 

 is wretched ; the villages are deserted and in ruins, much land lying 

 waste, the people looking squalid, poor and miserable. The severity 

 of the system was attested by the frequent insurrections that took 

 place a few years back, but in the open valley of the Nile these were 

 easily quelled. Meantime the Pasha, instead of husbanding his re- 

 sources to enable himself, now that he has established his power, to 

 reduce the burthens of his people, squanders away his revenue in ab- 

 surd schemes. He forces the produce of articles with expensive pur- 

 chased machinery, which he could buy cheaper from Europe in exchange 

 for the natural products of Egypt. He engages in splendid projects, 

 and seeks applause from the people of England and France. These 

 mad enthusiasts, the Saint Simoniens, told him of the advantage of a 

 rail-road across the Isthmus of Suez, and he is now surveying the 

 ground for that purpose. He is trying to realize the splendid idea of 

 Napoleon, of damming the two branches of the Nile, and irrigating 

 the whole of the Delta ; and with an almost childish impatience to com- 

 plete his work, he drives the population of whole districts to the work, 

 neither paying them nor providing them with food, in consequence of 

 which many perish. Then he has sent 20,000 men to subdue Yemen, 

 and to attack the Aseers, a wild tribe of Bedoweens, who will lead them 

 into the desert, and probably destroy all the expensive materiel with 

 which the Egyptian armies are most liberally furnished. Many of these 

 schemes are worthy in themselves, but they are too great for the re- 

 sources of the country, and the attempt to force them has given rise 

 to a system of relentless tyranny, and reduced the people to a state of 

 misery exceeding what I have ever seen or heard of elsewhere. The 

 only thing I saw that gave me unmixed pleasure, was the Government 

 school at Cairo, where about 900 boys are educated at the public 

 expense, each boy receiving from 15 to 80 piastres a month, his food 



