Page:Thirty-five years in the East.djvu/67

Rh house of the pilgrim, where we were living so comfortably, and establishing ourselves in the miserable palace of our patient, the Agha, who was reduced to such a miserable state of poverty by the robbery, that he could hardly provide for his most urgent necessities, and was very glad to see us order our victuals to be brought from the bazaar. On the third or fourth night of our stay in our new abode, we were alarmed by the same tumults as before, and awakened by a lamentable cry from the women, of " Lilililili," proceeding from the terraces, where they slept in the open air. We soon saw armed Arabs filling the yard, quarrelling and disputing, and we took them for the Agelis. As our room was on the ground-floor, and had only one door and two windows looking into the yard, we imagined ourselves prisoners and lost, till I got to a corner of the window, through the wooden lattice of which I perceived the long tshibuck (pipe) of the Agha, which encouraged me to venture out. He was sitting among a great crowd of his people, quietly smoking his pipe, so drawing nearer to him and saluting him, I inquired about the cause of the tumult. He told me that the mother of the unhappy slain children, having passed a sleepless night, was frightened by the report of a musket, which appeared to proceed from outside the town, and she imagined that the Agelis had come back to attack the palace. She began to scream, and the neighbouring women joined in chorus, crying for help, which awoke all the population of the city. By a strict inquiry, however, it was ascertained that the gun had been fired by the watchman of a garden, to frighten the wild beasts, which resorted to the place for the purpose of devouring the melons. Although the whole affair ended with our fright,we nevertheless desired heartily to depart as soon as possible from that miserable place, where robbery was the order of the day.

At mid-day we witnessed the owner of an ass being forcibly deprived of his beast ; the deed was effected before the gates of the city, and the ass was driven away into the desert. In fact, the Arabs in general may with justice be looked upon as robbers of the worst description.