immediate contact with the heathen, can have any idea of the wretched condition of their women, even at this day.  Kept in a state of abject bondage, they are compelled to serve with rigor.  Controlled as though they were possessed of less intelligence than male children of tender years, it might yet be supposed, from the burdens laid upon them, that they were possessed of far superior strength, physically, than men.  In some countries—­not all of them heathen or Mohammedan either—­the amount of labor imposed upon women of the lower orders in society would task the strength of beasts of burden.  The only exercise of reason allowed among such, is a sort of instinct which will enable them to perform all kinds of drudgery, and to act with scrupulous fidelity to their unkind, very often brutal and faithless, husbands—­task-masters would be the better name.  Of women under such rule, it may truly be said, the grave is their best, their only friend.

Among the Arabs, prior to Mohammed, the women were in a wretchedly debased condition, which has been but slightly improved by the rules of the Koran.  By its sanction, wives were bought by their husbands, though it was asserted that it was not lawful for men to exchange their wives.  The price paid by Mohammed for his wives, of which he had nine, varied, according to their rank and beauty, from one to one hundred dollars each.  The common people procured theirs at a cheaper rate.  Specific directions are given, too, for the proper government of women.  “Those wives,” says Mohammed, “whose perverseness ye may be apprehensive of, rebuke, and remove them into separate apartments, and chastise them."[B] When such precepts as these were laid down in the Koran, which was considered a direct revelation from God, it is not surprising that the severest punishment was inflicted on women who attempted to exercise any control over themselves or their households.  The will of the proud, insolent Arab was supreme, whether his demands were reasonable or otherwise; having bought his wives cheap, he might maltreat or divorce them at pleasure.  Like the Chinese, the Mohammedan women are denied the hope of immortality.  “Earthly women, when they die, cease to have any existence; but men, if faithful to Mohammed, are to enter paradise, and be associated with a new race of transcendently beautiful female beings.”  “The glories of eternity,” says the Koran, “will be eclipsed by the resplendent ‘women of paradise,’ created ’not of clay, as mortal women are, but of pure musk, and free from all natural impurities, defects, and inconveniencies incident to the sex; ... secluded from public view in pavilions of hollow pearl.’"[C]