There Is A Picture In Every
Street, And At Every Bazaar Stall.
Some of these our celebrated
water-colour painter, Mr. Lewis, has produced with admirable truth
and exceeding minuteness and
Beauty; but there is room for a
hundred to follow him; and should any artist (by some rare
occurrence) read this, who has leisure, and wants to break new
ground, let him take heart, and try a winter in Cairo, where there
is the finest climate and the best subjects for his pencil.
A series of studies of negroes alone would form a picturebook,
delightfully grotesque. Mounting my donkey to-day, I took a ride
to the desolate noble old buildings outside the city, known as the
Tombs of the Caliphs. Every one of these edifices, with their
domes, and courts, and minarets, is strange and beautiful. In one
of them there was an encampment of negro slaves newly arrived:
some scores of them were huddled against the sunny wall; two or
three of their masters lounged about the court, or lay smoking upon
carpets. There was one of these fellows, a straight-nosed ebony-
faced Abyssinian, with an expression of such sinister good-humour
in his handsome face as would form a perfect type of villany. He
sat leering at me, over his carpet, as I endeavoured to get a
sketch of that incarnate rascality. "Give me some money," said the
fellow. "I know what you are about. You will sell my picture for
money when you get back to Europe; let me have some of it now!"
But the very rude and humble designer was quite unable to depict
such a consummation and perfection of roguery; so flung him a
cigar, which he began to smoke, grinning at the giver. I requested
the interpreter to inform him, by way of assurance of my
disinterestedness, that his face was a great deal too ugly to be
popular in Europe, and that was the particular reason why I had
selected it.
Then one of his companions got up and showed us his black cattle.
The male slaves were chiefly lads, and the women young, well
formed, and abominably hideous. The dealer pulled her blanket off
one of them, and bade her stand up, which she did with a great deal
of shuddering modesty. She was coal black, her lips were the size
of sausages, her eyes large and good-humoured; the hair or wool on
this young person's head was curled and greased into a thousand
filthy little ringlets. She was evidently the beauty of the flock.
They are not unhappy: they look to being bought, as many a
spinster looks to an establishment in England; once in a family
they are kindly treated and well clothed, and fatten, and are the
merriest people of the whole community. These were of a much more
savage sort than the slaves I had seen in the horrible market at
Constantinople, where I recollect the following young creature - {2}
(indeed it is a very fair likeness of her) whilst I was looking at
her and forming pathetic conjectures regarding her fate - smiling
very good-humouredly, and bidding the interpreter ask me to buy her
for twenty pounds.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 117 of 126
Words from 60729 to 61263
of 65663
