Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/132

 see her so annoyed and tormented by her servants. The conversation then turned on blacks: and I asked— "Are they then never susceptible of feeling: can kind treatment never work on their sensibility?"—"Doctor," answered Lady Hester, "they have neither one nor the other: it is a bit of black skin, which the people of the country say you must work on with the korbash, and with nothing else. I recollect an aga, who told me that he had a black slave, who, when he first bought her, one day got hold of his poniard, and seemed as if she was going to stab him with it. He started up, seized his sabre, and gave her a cut or two; then, with a switch, beat her pretty handsomely. From that day she became fond of him, faithful, and so attached, that, when he wanted to sell her, she would not be sold, but always contrived that the contract should be broken by her swearing she would kill herself, throw herself over the terrace, or something, that made the buyer refuse to take her.

"I recollect another story. There were five European travellers coming down the banks of the Nile on horseback, when they saw an aga, who was sitting in the open air, lay hold of a black woman by the hair of her head, throw her down, and flog her most unmercifully with the korbash. One of the party was a German count, or something, who, being what you call a humane man, said he must interfere; but the