Chaldea: From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria — John Shaqi
Chaldea: From the Earliest Times to the Rise of AssyriaRagozin, Zénaïde A. (Zénaïde Alexeïevna)
History
Chaldea: From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria
Ragozin, Zénaïde A. (Zénaïde Alexeïevna)
Babylonia -- History
2. Although not doomed to disappointment in the end, these hopes were
yet to be thwarted in many ways before the visions of that night became
reality. For many and various were the difficulties which Layard had to
contend with during the following months as well as during his second
expedition in 1848. The material hardships of perpetual camping out in
an uncongenial climate, without any of the simplest conveniences of
life, and the fevers and sickness repeatedly brought on by exposure to
winter rains and summer heat, should perhaps be counted among the least
of them, for they had their compensations. Not so the ignorant and
ill-natured opposition, open or covert, of the Turkish authorities. That
was an evil to which no amount of philosophy could ever fully reconcile
him. His experiences in that line form an amusing collection. Luckily,
the first was also the worst. The pasha whom he found installed at Mosul
was, in appearance and temper, more like an ogre than a man. He was the
terror of the country. His cruelty and rapacity knew no bounds. When he
sent his tax-collectors on their dreaded round, he used to dismiss them
with this short and pithy instruction: "Go, destroy, eat!" (i.e.
"plunder"), and for his own profit had revived several kinds of
contributions which had been suffered to fall into disuse, especially
one called "tooth-money,"--"a compensation in money, levied upon all
villages in which a man of such rank is entertained, for the wear and
tear of his teeth in masticating the food he condescends to receive from
the inhabitants."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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