Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 4.djvu/597

 THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 569

feveral defigns or neceflities required. Thefe v/cre Jaheleen Arabs, thofe cruel, barbarous fanatics, that deliberately (hed fo much blood during the time they were eftablifliing the Mahometan religion. Their prejudices had never been re- moved by any mixture of ftrangers, or foftened by fociety, even with their own nation after they were poliflied ; but buried, as it were, in thefe wild deferts, if they were not grown more favage, they had at leaft preferved, in their full vigour, thofe murdering principles which they had brought with them into that country, under the brutal and inhuman butcher Kaled Ibn el Waalid, impioufly called n^be Sword of God. If it fliculd be our lot to fall among thefe people, and it was next to a certainty that we were at that very inftant furrounded by them, death was certain, and our only comfort was, that we could die but once, and that to die like men was in our own option. Indeed, without confidering the bloody character which thefe wretches na- turally bear, there could be no reafon for letting us live.: We could be of no fervice to them as flaves ; and to have fent us into Egypt, after having firfl rifled and deftroyed our goods, could not be done by them but at a great expence, to which well-inclined people only could have been induced from charity, and of thatlaft virtue they had not even heard .the name. Our only ciiance then remaining was, that their number might be fo fmall, that, by our great fuperiority in fire-arms and in courage, we might turn the misfortune upon the aggreiTors, deprive them of their camels and means of carrying water, and leave them fcattered in the defert, to that death which either they or we, without al- ternative, mufl: fuifer.

¥0L. IV. 4 G I EXPLAINED