After crying and moaning for some time, in the
arms of her supporters, the woman, whom I now found to be a vender of
vegetables in the street, told her sad tale to all the passers-by
of her acquaintance, with many tears and much gesticulation, but at
length seated herself quietly down by her baskets, though every bone
in her body must have ached from the severe beating she had received.
This appeared to me to be a scene for the interference of the police,
who, however, do not appear to trouble themselves about the protection
of people who may be assaulted in the street.
I afterwards saw a drunken Englishman, an officer of the Indian
army, I am sorry to say, beat several natives of Cairo, with whom
he happened to come in contact in the crowd, in the most brutal and
unprovoked manner, and yet no notice was taken, and no complaint
made. It was certainly something very unexpected to me to see a Frank
Christian maltreating the Moslem inhabitants of a Moslem city in which
he was a stranger, and I regretted exceedingly that the perpetrator
of acts, which brought disgrace upon his character and country, should
have been an Englishman, or should have escaped punishment. No sooner
have we been permitted to traverse a country in which formerly it was
dangerous to appear openly as a Christian, than we abuse the privilege
thus granted by outrages on its most peaceable inhabitants.
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