Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/125

Rh might therefore be given to me; but the lady of the manor took a different view of the case, and denied the right of any one to remove it. On my arrival with the yoke of oxen, I found her already in possession of the field of battle, seated on the stone itself, in the apse of the roofless chapel. She was a lady about forty, with very regular features, modelled after the classical type. At the sight of our sacrilegious party she became animated with the fury of an ancient Pythoness. She bowed down to the ground before the stone at least twelve times, kissing it, and crossing herself each time; then she lit a fire and burnt incense, to purify the place from our presence, and witth great horror flung out of the sacred precinct some chicken-bones, the remains of our yesterday's luncheon. I saw from the first that she was utterly beyond the reach of per- suasion, and in my despair having exhausted my little stock of Greek, began to talk English to her, a sure way to aggravate an angry native in the Levant. They always imagine that the unknown words which the stranger utters are spells and curses which, from not knowing their import, they cannot meet with counter spells and counter curses.$40$ Finding it hopeless to prevail with the lady in possession, I next made an attempt to enlist in my favour the two cavasses by the mention of the magic word bakssish. But the opposition which I had to encounter was based on two motives which it was impossible to circumvent by stratagem, or set aside by force. The Turks having the idea that the stone contained treasure, wanted to smash it up; the woman imagined it to be