Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 January 1876 — Domestic Slaves la Egypt. [ARTICLE]

Domestic Slaves la Egypt.

Field labor is usually done by hired laborers; but all the service of native families as well as of moat of the 'Levantines (or Europeans who are settled and naturalized in the East) is carried on entirely by •laves, who, with few exceptions, are’ all of negro races from the interior of Africa. In this last respect Eastern slavery differs from the slavery of Scriptural times, as we have no reason |o think slaves’ were negroes chiefly or even frequently in those days, at least among the Israelites. Hagar was an Egyytian, and we hear of some who were captives taken in war from the various tribes around them. Many were born in the household and looked on more as members of the family than despised or ill-used. Of such was the trusted Eliezer, who was *to have been heir to Abraham had God not given him a son. It seems strange indeed that such a system, even modified, as it undoubtedly Was, by patriarchal habits of life, should have been so distinctly permitted as it was in the law of Moses; but we may remember that so was divorce permitted, ‘‘for the hardness of their hearts,” as our blessed Lord Himself said, no doubt because in botti cases still worse evils would have arisen from the prohibition in the barbarous state of things then prevailing in the world. Without being approved these tilings were tolerated under certain restrictions; and these were, as regarded slaves of the Hebrew race, so stringent that in fact a Hebrew, unless by his own wish, could not be a slave for more than six years, which amounted to nothing more than what we call being “bound” for a term. The hired servants, of whom we so often read in Scripture, seem to have been chiefly out-door laborers. As is the case now in the East, the negroes are found among field-workegs sometimes, butit is rather* exceptional j The open slave marts which existed a lbw years ago are no longer to be found in Cairo or Alexandria; but as many slaves find their way to these cities as formerly, and whoever wants to purchase can always do so by applying in ther.proper quarter. Every native house has at least one (if above the very poor),*and rich families have from ten to twenty, while the great harems count by hundreds. Those 1 allude to at present are almost entirely negroes; tho white slaves brought from Georgia and Circassia are only to he found in the families of Pashas, and domestic service is not the purpose for which they have been cruelly stolen from their mountain homes, or sold with yet baser cruelty by unnatural parents—they are to be a secondary sort of wives for the great, and to lead a lite of luxurious idleness, waited upon by swarms of black slaves who perform all the menial work of the establishment. As far as I can learn, the blacks are never sold by their parents, but taken by force from their villages by the “jellals,” or their agents, under whom they suffer untold misery till purchased by householders iu Cairo, or shipped off to Persia or Turkey. In general they are not ill-treated here, especially since a law has been made humanely allowing’ them to apply to the Police Court in case of cruel usage. The men or boys are then taken into the army, and the girls Sent to the Government schools or to factories. Of course there are many who, being new to the country and language and utterly ignorant, cannot understand this, and some are children who are nearly powerless; still, on the whole, it has kept down the tyranny of owners, and will do so more as they get to understand it better. The Oriental habit of shutting up women in the house so much makes it more difficult for a slave girl to escape than for a boy or man; still they do manage it, and 1 have several times had slaves come to my house to ask me to get an attestation from th« British Consulate to free them from a cruel mistress. Still, even with this loophole of escape, it is a wretched system, for the poor victim who has been torn from home and friends as a child has lost, past recall, all that made life most dear, and is thrown hack, as it were, on the worst part of human nature, the mereauimal pact (which seems partic ulurly strong in negro races). The pilfering and love of eating, etc., are inveterate among the greater part of them. (I have known somo fine exceptions, but they are rare.) Their domestic affections have no natural vent, they have no home and family of their own, and instead of the outdoor life for which they are physically best fitted they are cooped up in houses in narrow, damp streets and numbers die in the prime of life because this mode of existence is so unhealthy for them. The negro boys, if promising, are often sent to schools and made a great deal of by theii masters, but the girls and women learn only how to cook and do housework, and as much mischief as they can pick up through gossiping with neighboring slaves from the fiat roofs where they go to dry linen or to amuse themselvfes while the mistress sleeps.— Sunday at Home.