i 
INTERIOR OF AFRICA. 12^ 
him, that even his own slaves and domestics knew not where 
he slept. When the Moors had explained to him the cause of 
this outcry, they all went away, and I was permitted to sleep 
quietly until morning. 
March 13th. With the returning day commenced the same 
round of insult and irritation: the boys assembled to beat the 
hog, and the men and women to plague the Christian. It is 
impossible for me to describe the behaviour of a people who 
study mischief as a science, and exult in the miseries and mis- 
fortunes of their fellow-creatures. It is sufficient to observe, 
that the rudeness, ferocity, and fanaticism, which distinguish 
the Moors from the rest of mankind, found here a proper sub- 
ject whereon to exercise their propensities. I was a stranger, 
I was unprotected, and I was a Christian; each of these circum- 
stances is sufficient to drive every spark of humanity from the 
heart of a Moor; but when all of them, as in my case, were 
combined in the same person, and a suspicion prevailed withal, 
that I had come as a spy into the country, the reader will 
easily imagine that, in such a situation, I had every thing to 
fear. Anxious, however, to conciliate favour, and, if possible, 
to afford the Moors no pretence for ill treating me, I readily 
complied with every command, and patiently bore every insult; 
but never did any period of my life pass away so heavily: from 
sunrise to sunset, was I obliged to suffer, with an unruffled 
countenance, the insults of the rudest savages on earth. 
