HALF the world, it is said, knows not how the other half live. Our
Exploring Expedition saw the Feejee islanders getting their dinner off
human bones; and they are said to eat their own wives and children. The
husbandry of the modern inhabitants of Gournou (west of old Thebes)
is philosophical to a fault. To set up their housekeeping nothing is
requisite but two or three earthen pots, a stone to grind meal, and a
mat which is the bed. The house, namely a tomb, is ready without rent
or taxes. No rain can pass through the roof, and there is no door, for
there is no want of one, as there is nothing to lose. If the house do
not please them, they walk out and enter another, as there are several
hundreds at their command. "It is somewhat singular," adds Belzoni, to
whom we owe this account, "to talk of happiness among people who live in
sepulchres, among the corpses and rags of an ancient nation which they
know nothing of." In the deserts of Borgoo the rock-Tibboos still dwell
in caves, like cliff-swallows, and the language of these negroes
is compared by their neighbors to the shrieking of bats and to the
whistling of birds. Again, the Bornoos have no proper names; individuals
are called after their height, thickness, or other accidental quality,
and have nicknames merely. But the salt, the dates, the ivory, and the
gold, for which these horrible regions are visited, find their way into
countries where the purchaser and consumer can hardly be ranked in one
race with these cannibals and man-stealers; countries where man serves
himself with metals, wood, stone, glass, gum, cotton, silk, and wool;
honors himself with architecture; writes laws, and contrives to execute
his will through the hands of many nations; and, especially, establishes
a select society, running through all the countries of intelligent
men, a self-constituted aristocracy, or fraternity of the best, which,
without written law or exact usage of any kind, perpetuates itself,
colonizes every new-planted island and adopts and makes its own whatever
personal beauty or extraordinary native endowment anywhere appears.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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