Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1877-06-20
VOL. XXXIV.
EgHnt Not Altogether Desirable.

If, us your boat lies at Ghizeh, you look
out of your window.in the early morning,
you will probably see long and melan-
choly procession on the bank. First comes
IN ill-looking man in red fez and Il long
white shirt, carrying cane. Then come
two or three dozen boys and girls, half
naked, footsore, weeping us they limp
along, or trying to sing II kind of slow
chorus, and following them another man
with cane, which he freely uses to en-
courage the loiterers. This is gang OF
day-laborers. The khedive is filling up
some low-lying land with earth taken from
the rivers bank, and these poor little
wretches have been requisitioned from the
villages and suburbs to carry the soil from
one side of the road to the other. They
are paid Il microscopic price,-at least it
is paid to the taskmaster,-and you hope
against hope that they ever get any of it,
In the hot midday you pass by the scene
Of labor and see them ut work, and after
sunset you hear the sad chant of the morn
ing and see the same professions, without
the canes, going home. 1t is shocking to
see young girls carrying huge burdens of
earth, or baskets of lime for the builders,
or running up and down to the Nile for
water for the workers, their feet and often
their bare shoulders bleeding. Their lives
are bitter with hard bondage, in mortar
and in brick, and in all manner of service
in the field rs Moses wrote Of the lsra-
elites; only that now it is the Egyptians
themselves who suffer at the hands of the
Turks. Forced labor is still the rule all
through Egypt, as it probably was thirty
centuries ago. All the great works have
been performed by it. At the sugar fac
tories in Upper Egypt, at the canal works,
at the railways, and, above all, at the pal
aces of the khedve, the laborers are driv-
en- to their tasks, and are paid as their
masters please. In the sugar factories
they receive Il portion of treacle, valued
at the highest market price, for their
wages; and, il they like, can sell it back
again at the lowest price. just as we
may suppose the greatest pyramids on the
long line Of hills above ancient Memphis
to be symbolical of the tyranny which
afflicted the laboring population of the
vast CITY 50 many centuries ago, 50 the
tdIluWoihS, tilo lullS Walls, tlc lllSll Iodu-
ways, and the palaces of the khedve, are
signs of the atllictons which English
money enables the Turkish rulers to lay
upon Cairo and all Egypt.
English bondholders may wonder where
their money has gone, but few days in
Cairo would soon settle their minds. Let
them look at the palaces, as aforesaid; let
them walk past two or three of the vast
barracks, each filled with black regiments.
every man of which has been bought from
u slave-dealer in Central Africa and trans
ported at immense cost, in spite Of all
treaties with the aboltionists. Let them
stand aside rs two grooms in purple and
gold and fine linen clear the way for a
magnificent pair of English high stepping
horses, drawing the carriage in which one
of the viceregal family is seated. while a
couple of hussars trot ut the wheels; let
them, in short, see Cairo as it is, and moi
through the false gloss of half French civ
ilization which its Turkish conquerors have
imposed on it.