At this rate of
carrying on, there must have been disappearances as strange as
Harrison's, from dozens of English parishes, in August 1660. Had a
crew of kidnappers been taking captives for purposes of private fiscal
policy, they would have shipped them to the Virginian plantations,
where Turkish galleys did not venture, and they would not have
kidnapped men of seventy. Moreover, kidnappers would not damage their
captives by stabbing them in the side and thigh, when no resistance
was made, as was done to Harrison.
'The rest who were in the same condition' were 'dumped down' near
Smyrna, where the valuable Harrison was sold to 'a grave physician.'
'This Turk he' was eighty-seven years of age, and 'preferred Crowland
in Lincolnshire before all other places in England.' No inquiries are
known to have been made about a Turkish medical man who once practised
at Crowland in Lincolnshire, though, if he ever did, he was likely to
be remembered in the district. This Turk he employed Harrison in the
still room, and as a hand in the cotton fields, where he once knocked
his slave down with his fist--pretty well for a Turk of eighty-seven!
He also gave Harrison (whom he usually employed in the chemical
department of his business) 'a silver bowl, double gilt, to drink in,
and named him Boll'--his way of pronouncing bowl--no doubt he had
acquired a Lincolnshire accent.
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