Part 3 (1/2)
AFRICAN WOMEN.
The Africans were formerly renowned for their industry in cultivating the ground, for their trade, navigation, caravans and useful arts.--At present they are remarkable for their idleness, ignorance, superst.i.tion, treachery, and, above all, for their lawless methods of robbing and murdering all the other inhabitants of the globe.
Though they still retain some sense of their infamous character, yet they do not choose to reform. Their priests, therefore, endeavor to justify them, by the following story: ”Noah,” say they, ”was no sooner dead, than his three sons, the first of whom was _white_, the second _tawny_, and the third _black_, having agreed upon dividing among them his goods and possessions, spent the greatest part of the day in sorting them; so that they were obliged to adjourn the division till the next morning. Having supped and smoked a friendly pipe together, they all went to rest, each in his own tent. After a few hours sleep, the white brother got up, seized on the gold, silver, precious stones, and other things of the greatest value, loaded the best horses with them, and rode away to that country where his white posterity have been settled ever since. The tawny, awaking soon after, and with the same criminal intention, was surprised when he came to the store house to find that his brother had been beforehand with him. Upon which he hastily secured the rest of the horses and camels, and loading them with the best carpets, clothes, and other remaining goods, directed his route to another part of the world, leaving behind him, only a few of the coa.r.s.est goods, and some provisions of little value.
When the third, or black brother, came next morning in the simplicity of his heart to make the proposed division, and could neither find his brethren, nor any of the valuable commodities, he easily judged they had tricked him, and were by that time fled beyond any possibility of discovery.
In this most afflicted situation, he took his _pipe_, and begun to consider the most effectual means of retrieving his loss, and being revenged on his perfidious brothers.
After revolving a variety of schemes in his mind, he at last fixed upon watching every opportunity of making reprisals on them, and laying hold of and carrying away their property, as often as it should fall in his way, in revenge for that patrimony of which they had so unjustly deprived him.
Having come to this resolution, he not only continued in the practice of it all his life, but on his death laid the strongest injunctions on his descendants to do so, to the end of the world.”
Some tribes of the Africans, however, when they have engaged themselves in the protection of a stranger, are remarkable for fidelity. Many of them are conspicuous for their temperance, hospitality, and several other virtues.
Their women, upon the whole, are far from being indelicate or unchaste.
On the banks of the Niger, they are tolerably industrious, have a considerable share of vivacity, and at the same time a female reserve, which would do no discredit to a politer country. They are modest, affable, and faithful; an air of innocence appears in their looks and in their language, which gives a beauty to their whole deportment.
When, from the Niger, we approach toward the East, the African women degenerate in stature, complexion, sensibility, and chast.i.ty. Even their language, like their features, and the soil they inhabit, is harsh and disagreeable. Their pleasures resemble more the transports of fury, than the gentle emotions communicated by agreeable sensations.
GREAT ENTERPRISES OF WOMEN IN THE TIMES OF CHIVALRY.
The times and the manners of chivalry, by bringing great enterprises, bold adventures, and extravagant heroism into fas.h.i.+on, inspired the women with the same taste.
The two s.e.xes always imitate each other. Their manners and their minds are refined or corrupted, invigorated or dissolved together.
The women, in consequence of the prevailing pa.s.sion, were now seen in the middle of camps and of armies. They quitted the soft and tender inclinations, and the delicate offices of their own s.e.x, for the courage, and the toilsome occupations of ours.
During the crusades, animated by the double enthusiasm of religion and of valor, they often performed the most romantic exploits. They obtained indulgences on the field of battle, and died with arms in their hands, by the side of their lovers, or of their husbands.
In Europe, the women attacked and defended fortifications. Princesses commanded their armies, and obtained victories.
Such was the celebrated Joan de Mountfort, disputing for her duchy of Bretagne, and engaging the enemy herself.
Such was the still more celebrated Margaret of Anjou, queen of England and wife of Henry VI. She was active and intrepid, a general and a soldier. Her genius for a long time supported her feeble husband, taught him to conquer, replaced him upon the throne, twice relieved him from prison, and though oppressed by fortune and by rebels, she did not yield, till she had decided in person twelve battles.
The warlike spirit among the women, consistent with ages of barbarism, when every thing is impetuous because nothing is fixed, and when all excess is the excess of force, continued in Europe upwards of four hundred years, showing itself from time to time, and always in the middle of convulsions, or on the eve of great revolutions.
But there were eras and countries, in which that spirit appeared with particular l.u.s.tre. Such were the displays it made in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Hungary, and in the Islands of the Archipelago and the Mediterranean, when they were invaded by the Turks.
Every thing conspired to animate the women of those countries with an exalted courage; the prevailing spirit of the foregoing ages; the terror which the name of the Turks inspired; the still more dreadful apprehensions of an unknown enemy; the difference of _dress_, which has a stronger _effect_ than is commonly supposed on the imagination of a people; the difference of religion, which produced a kind of sacred horror; the striking difference of manners; and above all, the confinement of the female s.e.x, which presented to the women of Europe nothing but the frightful ideas of servitude and a master; the groans of honor, the tears of beauty in the embrace of barbarism, and the double tyranny of love and pride!
The contemplation of these objects, accordingly, roused in the hearts of the women a resolute courage to defend themselves; nay, sometimes even a courage of enthusiasm, which hurled itself against the enemy.--That courage, too, was augmented, by the promises of a religion, which offered eternal happiness in exchange for the sufferings of a moment.
It is not therefore surprising, that when three beautiful women of the isle of Cyprus were led prisoners to Selim, to be secluded in the seraglio, one of them, preferring death to such a condition, conceived the project of setting fire to the magazine; and after having communicated her design to the rest, put it in execution.
The year following, a city of Cyprus being besieged by the Turks, the women ran in crowds, mingling themselves with the soldiers, and, fighting gallantly in the breach, were the means of saving their country.
Under Mahomet II. a girl of the isle of Lemnos, armed with the sword and s.h.i.+eld of her father, who had fallen in battle, opposed the Turks, when they had forced a gate, and chased them to the sh.o.r.e.