skilled in simples, Eastern as well as Western, praise
garlic highly, declaring that it “strengthens
the body, prepares the constitution for fatigue, brightens
the sight, and, by increasing the digestive power,
obviates the ill-effects arising from sudden change
of air and water.” The traveller inserts
it into his dietary in some pleasant form, as “Provence-butter,”
because he observes that, wherever fever and ague
abound, the people, ignorant of cause but observant
of effect, make it a common article of food.
The old Egyptians highly esteemed this vegetable,
which, with onions and leeks, enters into the list
of articles so much regretted by the Hebrews (Numbers,
xi. 5; Koran, chap. 2). The modern people of
the Nile, like the Spaniards, delight in onions, which,
as they contain between 25 and 30 per cent. of gluten,
are highly nutritive. In Arabia, however, the
stranger must use this vegetable sparingly. The
city people despise it as the food of a Fellah-a boor.
The Wahhabis have a prejudice against onions, leeks,
and garlic, because the Prophet disliked their strong
smell, and all strict Moslems refuse to eat them immediately
before visiting the mosque, or meeting for public
prayer. [FN#5] A policeman; see Chap. I. [FN#6]
The stricter sort of Moslems, such as the Arabs, will
not wear gold ornaments, which are forbidden by their
law. [FN#7] See “The Gold Mines of Midian,”
and “The Land of Midian (Revisited),”
by Sir R. F. Burton. [FN#8] The projecting latticed
window, made of wood richly carved, for which Cairo
was once so famous. But they are growing out of
fashion with young Egypt, disappearing before heating
glass and unsightly green blinds. [FN#9] Caste in
India arises from the peculiarly sociable nature of
the native mind, for which reason “it is found
existing among sects whose creeds are as different
and as opposite as those of the Hindu and the Christian.”
(B. A. Irving’s Prize Essay on the Theory
and Practice of Caste.) Hence, nothing can be more
terrible to a man than expulsion from caste; the excommunication
of our feudal times was not a more dreadful form of
living death. [FN#10] With us every man’s house
is his castle. But caste divides a people into
huge families, each member of which has a right to
know everything about his “caste-brother,”
because a whole body might be polluted and degraded
by the act of an individual. Hence, there is no
such thing as domestic privacy, and no system of espionnage
devised by rulers could be so complete as that self-imposed
by the Hindus. [FN#11] The Calcutta Review (No. 41),
noticing “L’Inde sous la Domination Anglaise,”
by the Baron Barchou de Penhoën, delivers the following
sentiment: “Whoever states, as the Baron
B. de P. states and repeats, again and again, that
the natives generally entertain a bad opinion of the
Europeans generally, states what is decidedly untrue.”
The reader will observe that I differ as decidedly
from the Reviewer’s opinion. Popular feeling
towards the English in India was “at first one