A son in his own
family, and related to me, as he sat on my carpet, how his son died the
preceding night in his arms. The imprudence of my slave likewise
counteracted all my measures of precaution. Having missed him for
several days early in the morning, I inquired the cause of his absence,
when he told me that he had gone to assist in washing the dead bodies.
The poor who died during
[p.413] the night were exposed in the morning upon biers, on the sea-
shore, to be washed before the ceremony of praying over them in the
mosque; and my slave thought it meritorious to join in this office,
which had devolved upon several negro pilgrims, who happened to be at
Yembo. I desired him to remain at home, for the future, at that hour, to
prepare my breakfast; but I was as little able to prevent his walking
out at other times, as I could myself dispense with that duty; and one
could scarcely pass the bazar without touching infected people, or at
least those who had been in close contact with them.
The sense of the danger which then threatened me is much greater, now
that I find myself far removed from it, than I felt it at the time.
After the first four or five days, I became tolerably familiarized with
the idea of the plague, and compared the small numbers who died every
day with the mass of the remaining inhabitants.
