ty upon my abject condition!
Look down upon me, ye that are elated with pleasure. Mark my
surroundings! This great, silent wilderness of forest, to which there
is no end; it stretches from sunset to sunrise, from sea to sea; it
excludes light and air; it smothers the earth with its limitless length
and breadth. Through its thick, heavy drapery of leafage--I may not
breathe, neither be warmed, by ever a single sun-ray.

"Hark to the storm of wind sweeping over the tops of the giant trees!
How it expends its might in attempting to open even a slight gap, that
one of the true believers might see a glimpse of heaven before he dies!
But it may not be. Nature took ages to build this rampart and construct
this impregnable palisade, and the baffled tempest retreats, and leaves
me hopeless and despairing.

"The air is pregnant with deadly vapours; gigantic trees, fallen from
extreme age, lie prone on the ground, infested by myriads upon myriads
of creeping things; withered branches strew the ground thickly, and
their leaves, long since dead, lie damp and sappy, reeking with every
insect abomination. From afar, like the indistinct and distant sound of
thunder, is borne to my ears, after traversing aisles upon aisles, the
hungry lions' roar, suggestive of what may happen if relief comes not
early to the lonely Arab boy; and my quickened hearing catches strains
of a still fiercer meaning, the voice of the leopard calling to his
mate, mingled with the growls of the hyaena.

"Ah, cruel chance, that my fresh young life should be thus beset with
dangers which menace it. What sin has my infancy committed that my
youth must be punished so severely? What wrong have these boy-hands
performed, that their owner merits death? What guile has ever my
childhood's heart conceived for which my youth must pay the penalty?
What crime has ever my brain meditated, that I must be reft of my life
at so early an age? None,--none. I but ever acted as I knew how; not
wantonly, not recklessly, but just as instinct and nature, untutored,
impelled me to.

"I would my father had never felt the power of manhood, or met my
mother. I would my mother's womb, with its embryo, had withered up;
then had I not been born to encounter such evil days. From the evil day
Khamis bin Abdullah kindled in my father's breast knowledge of his
comparative poverty I date the birth of my misfortune; from that time
hard and evil days innumerable have I seen; mischanc