DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.12665#0182
166
INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
away ; and their wives and daughters violated be-
fore their eyes by a brutal soldiery.
During the evening a fine portly man, in the
flowing Syrian dress, came to pay me a visit.
His complexion proclaimed him of Coptic origin*
a descendant of the ancient lords of Egypt; his
inkhorn in his sash told me that he was a writer,
and his cordial salutation that he was a Christian.
Living among Turks, Arabs, and Jews, he greeted
me as if it were a rare thing to meet a professor of
the same faith, and a believer in the same God and
Saviour. He regretted that he had been away
when I arrived, and said that he ought by right to
have had me at his house, as he was the only
Christian in Hebron; and he, even where prose-
lytes were wanted, would perhaps not have passed
muster according to the strict canons of a Catho-
lic church. My Christian friend, however, was
more of a Jew than any of the descendants of Is-
rael around me ; for, amid professions of friend-
ship and offers of service, he was not forgetting
his own interests. The European and American
governments had been appointing consular agents
in many of the cities of Syria, and this office, un-
der the government of the present pacha, ex-
empted the holder from certain taxes and imposi-
tions, to which the fellahs and rayahs were sub-
ject. America is known in the Holy Land by her
missionaries, by the great ship (the Delaware)
which, a year before, touched at the seaport
towns, and by the respect and character which
INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
away ; and their wives and daughters violated be-
fore their eyes by a brutal soldiery.
During the evening a fine portly man, in the
flowing Syrian dress, came to pay me a visit.
His complexion proclaimed him of Coptic origin*
a descendant of the ancient lords of Egypt; his
inkhorn in his sash told me that he was a writer,
and his cordial salutation that he was a Christian.
Living among Turks, Arabs, and Jews, he greeted
me as if it were a rare thing to meet a professor of
the same faith, and a believer in the same God and
Saviour. He regretted that he had been away
when I arrived, and said that he ought by right to
have had me at his house, as he was the only
Christian in Hebron; and he, even where prose-
lytes were wanted, would perhaps not have passed
muster according to the strict canons of a Catho-
lic church. My Christian friend, however, was
more of a Jew than any of the descendants of Is-
rael around me ; for, amid professions of friend-
ship and offers of service, he was not forgetting
his own interests. The European and American
governments had been appointing consular agents
in many of the cities of Syria, and this office, un-
der the government of the present pacha, ex-
empted the holder from certain taxes and imposi-
tions, to which the fellahs and rayahs were sub-
ject. America is known in the Holy Land by her
missionaries, by the great ship (the Delaware)
which, a year before, touched at the seaport
towns, and by the respect and character which