Page:Domestic Life in Palestine.pdf/323

316 duce me to add my persuasions to theirs. But I instinctively felt, as he did, that he was more safe alone, than if he went with an antagonistic and yet insufficient force. Considerable anxiety was felt on his account, for it was thought to be a hazardous enterprise.

He arrived at Nablûs before the excitement was subdued. The people seemed to be taken by surprise, and to be calmed by his confidence in them. He found that Mr. Lyde had been kindly protected from the enraged populace by Mahmoud Bek Abdul Hady, in his new and beautiful house, which was actually besieged by the people, and considerably injured, because the Governor refused to yield the offender up to them. Mr. Lyde, seeing the mischief that was being done, made his will, wrote a few letters, and then begged the Governor to let him go out to the  mob, that they might be appeased by his death. He said, "If they can not kill me, others will surely suffer." However, the Governor steadily persisted in protecting him, and detained him as his prisoner, saying, "Be at rest—I and my family, my servants and all my household, will risk our lives, rather than let yours be sacrificed." The disappointed crowd gathered menacingly round the building, and threw stones and fired at it for some time, and then went away to wreak their vengeance on the unoffending inhabitants of the Christian quarter.

The following extract, from a dispatch addressed to Mr. Finn by my brother, will show the persistent cruelty of the fanatics:

"I then went to the house of M. Zeller, where I found the lower rooms utterly pillaged, and the floors covered with broken china, leaves of books, maps, and papers of all descriptions, in fragments. Upstairs, I found the trunks, desks, boxes, a chest of drawers, etc., broken and destroyed. In fact, the populace left nothing undone that could possibly be effected toward the injury of the Christians. Fortunately, most of the Protestants were, and are still, away with the Bishop, otherwise they would certainly have been