Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/89

 paid one dollar to the Father Administrator, which, if the patient recovered, was returned to the master, but if he died, was kept to defray his funeral expenses, For a long period, there was no place of interment allotted to the captives; their dead bodies were thrown outside the city walls, to be devoured by the hordes of street-dogs which infest the towns of Mohammedan countries. At length, by the noble self-denial of a private individual, whose name, we regret to say, we are unable to trace, a slave's burial ground was obtained. A Capuchin friar, the friend and confessor of Don John of Austria, natural so of the Emperor Charles V., was taken captive. Knowing the esteem in which he was held by the prince, an immense sum was demanded for his ransom. The money was immediately forwarded, but instead of purchasing his freedom, the disinterested philanthropist bought a piece of ground for a burial-place for Christian slaves, and, devoting himself to solace the spiritual and temporal wants of his unhappy co-religionists, uncomplainingly passed the rest of his life in exile and captivity.

A few years after the founding of this House of the Spanish Hospital, as it was termed, another Christian religious establishment, the House of the French Mission, was planted in Algiers. A certain Duchess d'Eguillon, at the suggestion of the celebrated philanthropist Vincent de Paul, who had himself been an Algerine captive, commenced this good work by an endowment of 4,000 livres per annum. These two religious houses were exempted from all duties or taxes, and mass w r as performed in them daily with all the pomp and splendor of the Romish Church. There was also a chapel in each of the six bagnes — the prisons where the slaves were confined at night — in which service was performed on Sundays and holidays. The Greek Church had also a chapel and small establishment in one of the bagnes. Brother Comelin, of the order of redemption, tells us, in his Voyage, that they celebrated Christmas in the Spanish Hospital "with the same liberty and as solemnly as in Christendom. Midnight mass was chanted to the sound of trumpets, drums, flutes, and hautboys; so that in the stillness of night the infidels heard the worship of the true God over all their accursed city, from ten at night till two in the morning." Such was Mohammedan toleration in Algiers, at the period, too, we should recollect, of the high and palmy days of the Inquisition. We may easily conceive what would have been the fate of the infidels if they, by any chance, had invaded the midnight silence of Rome or Madrid with the sounds of their worship. The only exceptions to the general good treatment and respect bestowed upon Christian ecclesiastics in Algiers was, when inspired by a furious zeal for martyrdom, they openly insulted the Mohammedan religion; or when the populace were excited by forced conversions and other intolerant cruelties practiced upon Mussulman slaves in Europe. We shall briefly mention two instances of such occurrences.

One Pedro, a brother of Redemption, had traveled to Mexico and Peru, and collected in those rich countries a vast amount of treasure for the order. He then went to Algiers, where he employed half the money in ransoming,