INSTANCE OF FEMALE HEROISM, AND THE MODE OF TREATING WOMEN IN SOME COUNTRIES.

The kingdom of Currat in Hindostan was governed by queen Dargocette, eminent for spirit and beauty. Small as that kingdom is, it contained about seventy thousand towns and villages, the effect of long peace and prosperity. Being invaded by Asaph Can, not many years ago, the queen, mounted on an elephant, led her troops to battle. Her son Rajah Bier Shaw, being wounded in the heat of action, was by her orders carried from the field. That accident having occasioned a general panić, the queen was left with no more than three hundred horsemen. Adhar, who conducted her elephant, exhorted her to retire, while it could be done with safety. The heroine rejected the advice. 'It is true,' said she, 'we are overcome in battle; but not in honor., Shall I, for a lingering ignominious life, lose reputation that has been my chief study! Let your gratitude repay now the obligations you owe me: pull out your dagger, and save me from slavery, by putting an end to my life.'

The Ciagas, a fierce and wandering nation in the central parts of Africa, being supinely idle at home, subject their wives and their slaves to every sort of drudgery, such as diging, sowing, reaping, cutting wood, grinding corn, fetching water, &c. These poor creatures are suffered to toil in the

fields and woods, ready to faint with excessive labor, while the monsters of men will not give themselves even the trouble of training animals for work, though they have the example of the Portuguese before their eyes.

It is the business of women among the wandering Arabs of Africa, to card, spin, and weave, and to manage other household affairs. They milk the cattle, grind, bake, brew, dress the victuals, and bring home wood and water. They even take care of their husbands' horses, feed, curry, comb, bridle and saddle them. They would also, like Moorish wives, be obliged to dig, sow, and reap their corn, but luckily for them, the Arabs live entirely upon plunder. Father Joseph Gumilla, in his account of a country in South America, bordering on the great river Orinoco, describes pathetically the miserable slavery of married women there, and mentions a practice that would appear incredible to one unacquainted with the manners of that country; which is, that married women frequently destroy their female infants. A married woman of a virtuous character and a good understanding, having been guilty of that crime, was reproached by our author in very bitter terms. She heard him patiently to the end of his discourse with eyes fixed on the ground, and answered as follows: I wish to God, Sir, I wish to God, that my mother had by my death, prevented the manifold distresses I have endured, and have yet to endure as long as I live. Had she kindly stifled me at my birth, I should not have

felt the pain of death, nor numberless other pains to which life hath subjected me. Consider, father, our deplorable condition. Our husbands go out to hunt with their bows and arrows and trouble themselves no farther. We are dragged along with one infant, at our breast another in a basket. They return in the evening without any burthen; we return with the burthen of our children; and though tired out with a long march, are not permitted to sleep, but must labor the whole night in grinding maize to make chica for them. They get drunk, and in their drunkenness they beatjus, draw us by the hair of the head, and tread us under foot. But what have we to comfort us for slavery, perhaps of twenty years? A young wife is brought in upon us, who is permitted to abuse us and our children, because we are no longer regarded. Can human nature endure such tyranny? What kindness can we show to our female children, equal to that of delivering them from such a state of servitude, more bitter a thousand times than death? I say again, would to God that my mother had put me underground the moment I was born.'

One would imagine, that the women of that country should have the greatest abhorrence of matrimony; but all-prevailing nature determines the contrary, and the appetite for matrimony overbalances every rational consideration.

Upon a review of such conduct as this, how happy should English women think themselves, whose

condition is so much the reverse from that of those poor wretches. Let them at least forbear from that spirit of usurpation to which they are so prone, and from a principle of gratitude learn some small degree of subjection.

14*

SAVAGE MANNERS, AND A REMARKABLE

INSTANCE OF RUSSIAN BARBARITY.

Herodotus says, that a Scythian presents the king with the heads of the enemies he has killed in battle; and the man who does not bring a head, gets no share of the plunder. He adds, that many Scythians clothe themselves with the skins of men, and make use of the skulls of their enemies to drink out of. Diodorus Siculus reports of the Gauls, that they carry home the heads of their enemies slain in battle; and after embalming them, deposit them in chests as their chief trophy, bragging of the sums offered for these heads by the friends of the deceased, and refused.

No savages were more cruel than the Greeks and Trojans, as described by Homer; men were butchered in cold blood, towns were reduced to ashes, sovereigns were exposed to the most humiliating indignities, and no respect was paid to age or sex. The young Adrastus thrown from his car, and lying in his face in the dust, obtained quarter from Menelaus. Agamemnon upbraided his brother for his lenity: 'Let none escape destruction,' said he, 'not even the lisping infant in the mother's arms: all her sons must with Ilium fall, and on her ruins unburied remain.' He pierced the the suppliant with his spear, and setting his foot on the body pulled it out.