Had I been dressed, or could I have made my way readily into the street, I should have certainly gone down to interpose, for never did I witness any scene so horrible, or one I so earnestly desired to put an end to.  At length, though the pertinacity of the woman was astonishing, when exhausted by blows, she lay fainting on the ground, the man went his way.  The spectators, and there were many, who looked on without any attempt to rescue this poor creature from her savage assailant, now raised her from the earth.  The whole of this time, the veil she wore was never for a moment displaced, and but for the brutal nature of the scene, it would have been eminently ridiculous in the eyes of a stranger.  After crying and moaning for some time, in the arms of her supporters, the woman, whom I now found to be a vender of vegetables in the street, told her sad tale to all the passers-by of her acquaintance, with many tears and much gesticulation, but at length seated herself quietly down by her baskets, though every bone in her body must have ached from the severe beating she had received.  This appeared to me to be a scene for the interference of the police, who, however, do not appear to trouble themselves about the protection of people who may be assaulted in the street.

I afterwards saw a drunken Englishman, an officer of the Indian army, I am sorry to say, beat several natives of Cairo, with whom he happened to come in contact in the crowd, in the most brutal and unprovoked manner, and yet no notice was taken, and no complaint made.  It was certainly something very unexpected to me to see a Frank Christian maltreating the Moslem inhabitants of a Moslem city in which he was a stranger, and I regretted exceedingly that the perpetrator of acts, which brought disgrace upon his character and country, should have been an Englishman, or should have escaped punishment.  No sooner have we been permitted to traverse a country in which formerly it was dangerous to appear openly as a Christian, than we abuse the privilege thus granted by outrages on its most peaceable inhabitants.  I regret to be obliged to add, that it is but too commonly the habit, of Englishmen to beat the boat-men, donkey-men, and others of the poorer class, whom they may engage in their service.  They justify this cowardly practice—­cowardly, because the poor creatures can gain no redress—­by declaring that there is no possibility of getting them to stir excepting by means of the whip; but, in most cases, all that I witnessed, they were not at the trouble of trying fairer methods:  at once enforcing their commands by blows.  The comments made by the janissary and our own servant upon those who were guilty of such wanton brutality showed the feeling which it elicited; and when upon one occasion Miss E. and myself interposed, declaring that we would not allow any person in our service to be beaten, they told us not to be alarmed, for that the rais (captain of the boat), who was an Arab, would not put up with ill-treatment, but had threatened to go on shore at the next village with all his men.