Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/351

 their houses: and then giving away beads and earrings to get the young girls around him.

"Of the English, who have visited me here, I liked Captain Pechell and Captain Yorke very much, and thought them both clever men.

"Colonel Howard Vyse one day came up to the village and wrote me a note, and did everything he could to see me. He was an old Coldstream:—it broke my heart not to see him; but it would have revived too many melancholy reflections. Poor man! I believe he was very much hurt; but I could not help it.

"A man came here—I believe the only one who was saved out of a party that was killed going across the Desert—and asked me for a letter to the Arabs. I sent him away, telling him that he might just as well come and ask me for a pot of beer. What had I to do with their schemes and their navigation of the Euphrates? Yet, for this, this officer wrote verses upon the wall of the room against me.

"Then Mr. Croix de la Barre came, but I could not see him. He said he wanted to talk politics with me, and learn the customs and manners of the natives. I should tire you, doctor, if I were to tell you how many have come. I saw Lord B*****, when he was travelling, at the baths of Tiberias, where Abdallah Pasha happened to be. Lord B.