Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 21.djvu/120



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O says the poet; and thou, too, O father of my faith, wilt find me an altered man, if it be the will of Allah that we shall meet again. Yet not the frost has chilled my heart; not the harmattan-wind has seared my brow: the gloom that clouds my soul is the gloom of sorrow for the boundless misery of my fellow-creatures—even of my fellow-men. For the habitants of Monghistan are not brutes; nor are they apes, gifted with human skill. No: they are men, degraded by vice and monstrous superstitions, and as a human being I share in their shame, and the weight of their woe oppresses my own heart. May the angel of mercy be their helper!

Beth-Raka is not a large town, and I hoped to reach the opposite hills by sunset; but, before we had made our way to the end of the first street, the smoke began to stifle our breath, and we concluded to make a détour to the right and approach the furnace from the north side of the town, where the ground was higher and the air less suffocating. We entered a side-street, and would to Allah the smoke had been dense enough to blind our eyes and save us the distress of beholding such misery! The street forms a hollow way through the hills, and the rocks on both sides are full of caves, most of them widened to a height of eight feet. In and around these caves we saw a swarm of shapes as if the sleepers of a rock-tomb had issued from their gloomy dens—withered forms, bloated or swollen faces, and eyes that were not fit to meet the light of day. We met a half-grown lad with the face of an old man, and laborers that were too infirm to walk erect, and as we proceeded I saw with horror that the condition of these unfortunates was not the result of an exceptional malady, but of