Ancient associations of Syria; races, prejudices, &c. of the modern Syrians-Moral and political state of Syria under the former government-Progress and completion of Me- hemet Ali's conquest of Syria-Policy and effects of his government-The question and effect of his independence, and present position in regard to Europe and England, and to the domestic state of Turkey - The policy of Eng- land, as an European and Asiatic power, in the state and LETTERS ON EGYPT, EDOM, AND THE HOLY LAND. LETTER VIII. Departure for Akaba — Abdallah's wound-return to the Convent - joined by Dr. Mac Lennan and Mr. Clarke. Convent of St. Catherine, Mount Sinai, You will be surprised, my dear April 15, 1837. mother, to find that we are still at Mount Sinai. We started for Petra on Thursday morning, the 23rd of March, as we proposed when I last wrote, and had advanced two days on the road to Akaba, when an accident occurred to Abdallah, which obliged us to return to the Convent, and has detained us here ever since. We had pitched the tents, and were just lying down to rest ourselves, when a pistol went off, and we heard him crying, "Son morto !" He had VOL. II. B shot himself not in the stomach, as we feared at first, but in the thigh; the strength of the muscle turned the ball, and it had come out three or four inches below. What was to be done? We were two days east of the Convent, no doctor nearer than Cairo, except a Pole, who had left Mount Sinai the morning before in a contrary direction. I despatched an Arab forthwith, on one of the dromedaries, to Cairo for a surgeon, bidding him call at the Convent to see whether Dr. Mac Lennan, our Essouan friend, also bound for Petra, had arrived there. Poor Abdallah was obliged to interpret, and give all these directions himself. Hussein, meanwhile, and the Arabs, dressed his wound with rakie, a fiery brandy distilled from dates, which they consider a sovereign specific; we thought it best to let them doctor him their own way they then gave him a soporific draught, made of a shrub called shia, that grows wild in the desert, and presently he fell fast asleep-not so we. This was on Friday night, good Friday. The next two days passed very heavily, as you may well imagine. After much deliberation, we contrived a bed for him, as comfortable as circumstances admitted of, on the back of a camel. Hussein and Nuzzer, another of our Bedouins kind attentive creatures-walked by his side the whole of both days, steadying the bed and taking care of him, but he suffered much, and groaned sadly; the shia drink, however, procured him some refreshing sleep. What with the wound, the camels' pace on uneven and rocky ground, and the heat of the sun, an European would have been in a high fever, but he arrived at the Convent as cool almost as he left it most providentially, for no Dr. Mac Lennan had arrived, and no one knew how to bleed him, had that operation been requisite. Then for his entry there was no possible way of effecting it, except by the rope and windlass; it was a ticklish business. William stayed below, and I above, to direct proceedings;-he was hoisted up, secured by cords, in one of our iron bedsteads, William and Missirie steadying it by two ropes below. The projecting window-ledge was too narrow to admit of the bed's ascent to the level of the window, and, consequently, to get at him, it was necessarily so much depressed at one end, that I dreaded his slipping through, a fall of thirty feet. It was an anxious moment till we got hold of him, and when we did, poor fellow, he was obliged to twist himself, and we to pull him, out of the bed and round the cords it was suspended by, before we could land him. He bore it nobly, however; and never was I more thankful than when we fairly laid him down in the court of the Con vent. This is the twenty-second day since his wound, and, thank God! he has been recovering, I may say, from the very moment he received it. He has had no fever, has suffered no pain for many days past, and Dr. Mac Lennan, who arrived the day before yesterday, says he will be well, and able to return to Cairo by the end of the month. Our Bedouin messenger rode night and day, and, resting only three hours at the Convent, arrived at Cairo on the fourth day, and returned in five to Mount Sinai: extraordinary speed, when we reflect that the journey had taken us nine days and a half. Dr. Mac Lennan was on the eve of starting for Mount Sinai, and kindly undertook to prescribe for Abdallah; he was detained, however, on the road, and when he made his appearance, we had almost given up all hopes of his arrival. Hussein, by the bye, unlike most Orientals, did not at all like our sending for a Frank hakim, or |