Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/468

356 horns for turning, plenty of gum Arabic, cassia, myrrh, frankincense, and many other precious articles; these were all bartered, at Masuah and Suakem, for India goods. But nothing which violence and injustice can ruin, ever can subsist under Turkish government. The Bashas paying dearly for their confirmation at Constantinople, and uncertain if they should hold this office Long enough to make reimbursements for the money they had already advanced, had not patience to stay till the course of trade gradually indemnified them, but proceeding from extortion to extortion, they at last became downright robbers, seizing the cargo of the ships wherever they could find them, and exercising the most shocking cruelties on the person they belonged to, flaying the sailors alive, and impaling those that remained in their hands, to obtain, by terror, remittances from India. The trade was thus abandoned, and the revenue ceased. There were no bidders at Constantinople for the farm, nobody had trade in their heads when their lives were every hour in danger. Dahalac became therefore dependent on the Basha of Jidda, and he appointed an * Aga, who paid him a moderate sum, and appropriated to himself the provisions and salary allowed for the pearl fishery, or the greatest part of them.

Aga at Suakem endeavoured, in vain, to make the Arabs and people near him work without salary, so they abandoned an employment which produced nothing but punishment; and, in time, they grew ignorant of the fishery

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 * A Subaltern Governor.