and gardens, and in the labours of their domestic drudgery.
Some of the slaves thus observed by the Minister of Marine had been sailors and merchants and mechanics, military and naval officers, clerks, scholars, and other gentlefolks from Italy, Portugal, America, and all the lands which chanced to be "at war" with his highness the Dey. Formerly there had been hosts of English, French, Spanish, etc., but their governments having bowed their heads, opened their purses, and sent consuls to the piratical city, they were now graciously exempted from thraldom. It was hardish work for men accustomed to cooler climates to be obliged, in the sunshine of an African summer, to harness themselves to carts like oxen, and lift huge stones and hods of mortar with little more than a ragged shirt and trousers to cover them from the furnace-heat of day or the dews of night. Men who carry umbrellas and wear puggeries now-a-days on the Boulevard de la République of Algiers have but a faint conception of what some of their forefathers endured down at the "Marina" not much more than fifty years ago, and of what they themselves could endure, perhaps, if fairly tried! It must not be supposed, however, that all the slaves stood the trial equally well. Some were old, others were young; some were feeble, others strong; all were more or less worn—some terribly so.
