Route to Akaba-conference with the Alouins-Wady Araba Jerusalem. Excursion to Jericho and the Dead Sea. Journey to Tiberias by Nablous, Samaria, Acre, Nazareth, Journey, East of the Jordan, by El Hussn, Om Keis, M310279 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- gland, 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, April 15, 1837. You will be surprised, my dear 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, VOL. II. B "Son morto!" He had 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 |