Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/119

Rh by the profuse and indiscriminate employment of the whip. When he desires to make the native public "dress up in line" he cheerfully hammers their bare toes with the handle of his kourbash. When they are straying carelessly over the course between races, as crowds will do, and he desires to clear it, he simply flogs them off it with the lash. The thong whistles merrily round their brown calves, and they fly like a flock of sheep, startled, but not angered, alike without resistance and without rancour. It seems as natural a thing to them that they should be drilled and marshalled by liberally lavished blows as that they themselves should direct the movements of their donkeys by the same means. And even if they were possessed of full Parliamentary institutions, it is extremely doubtful whether any one of them would care enough about the matter to move the member for his constituency to "ask a question" on the subject in an Egyptian House of Commons.