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The service was simple and the music very good, but in the Te Deum, just as the verse "Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ," I caught sight of the bronze faces of these "punkah- wallahs," mostly bigoted Mussulmen, and was overwhelmed by the realization of the small progress which Christianity has made upon the earth in nineteen centuries. A Singhalese D.D. preached an able sermon.
Tatta and Akka, are two towns or villages of the province of Draha, situate on the southern confines of Morocco, and points of rendezvous for the caravans in their route over the Great Desert. Tatta is four days direct east from Akka, and placed in 28° 3' lat. and 90° 20' long. west of Paris. Akka consists of two hundred houses, inhabited by Mussulmen, and fifty by Jews.
The late Emperor, Muley Suleiman, professed to be a rigidly exact Mussulman, and considered it very indecent, and a great scandal that Jewesses, some of them, like most women of this country, of enormous dimensions, should be allowed to disturb the decent frame of mind of pious Mussulmen, whilst entering the threshold of the house of prayer, by the sad exhibitions of these good ladies stooping down and shewing their tremendous calves, when in the act of taking off their shoes before passing the mosques.
He resolved to send a fleet to explore them, for Albuquerque had enough to do in India to restrain the trembling Rajahs, and the Mussulmen Moors as they were then called who were always ready to shake off the yoke.
This, however, is no praise to them, for they could not resist acting according to the will and mind of God. As for the Mussulmen, what they do is for the benefit of slaves, especially females, who, one and all, are doomed to death; but, when purchased by the slave-dealers, their lives are spared, and they are made True Believers.
I wish the Norwegians could be made Mussulmen for awhile, for the sake of learning that cleanliness is not only next to godliness, but a necessary part of it. I doubt the existence of filthy Christians, and have always believed that St. Jerome was atrociously slandered by the Italian painters.
We had been advised not to be present at this ceremony, as it was stated to be of a purely religious nature, and it was feared we should be exposed to annoyance from the fanaticism of the Mussulmen. I am glad to say, however, that the curiosity of my party was stronger than their apprehensions.
But a time will come when the old customs will fall into oblivion, when new ways will creep in among Mussulmen like a rattlesnake crawling into a bed of roses. Faith will no longer give strength against those men of ice, and they will enter the nine-and-twenty gates of the seven-hilled city. "Lo! this did the Prophet reveal to me in the season of El-Ashsör, beginning at the time of sundown.
One of these Bengalis has been twice to Mecca, at an expense of 40 pounds on each visit, and on Friday appears in a rich Hadji suit, in which he goes through the town, and those Mussulmen who are not Hadji bow down to him. I saw from the very first that my project of visiting the native States was not smiled upon at Government House.
He accosted the first he met, and asked him the name of the place; who told him it was the city of the magicians, so called because of the great number of magicians therein who adored fire, and that there were but very few Mussulmen. Amgrad then demanded how far it was to the isle of Ebene: he was answered, that it was four months' voyage by sea, and a year's journey by land.
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