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320 MEHEMED ALl'S SLAVE-HUNTS.
• recover themselves. The Turks have, indeed, sufficient compassion to send the necessary quantity of water up to those poor wretches on the hill, who are too weak even to be brought down ; they are obliged to pour water over their heads first, and to allow them to drink only in small quantities, and gradually, for indulgence would prove fatal to them.
The greatest sufferings are not yet surmounted, and many of these unhappy men would prefer death inflicted by their own hands to the dreadful fate which awaits them, if they were acquainted with their lot beforehand. They now have to suffer every description of ill-treatment from their tormentors; blows with the butt-end of the musket, bayonet wounds, and stripes with the whip, are the ordinary modes of encouragement adopted to arouse the energies of those miserable beings, who, exhausted by physical or moral suffering, may happen to sink. Pity is unheard of in these transports; and as personal interest is not engaged for the preservation of one of those unhappy wretches, or to prove it an advantage, the only consideration is to render their escape impossible. The Djelabi treat their slaves with more humanity, because their personal interests are implicated, for each slave may be considered a capital to them, and they, consequently, do all in their power to preserve life, at least, and thus to avert a loss. The Turks, on the other hand, who have no considerations of this description to attend to, treat