eading people came to visit us; and one old man
quoted and recited heaps of Arabic poetry for our entertainment while
awaiting the supper.

Then 'Abdu'l Lateef Ibn Simhhan, joined by another, (a humbler adherent
of the family,) gave us a vivid relation of the famous battle of _Nezib_
in 1838, and of his desertion from the Egyptian army to the Turkish with
a hundred of his mountaineers, well armed, during the night; of how the
Turkish Pasha refused to receive him or notice him till he had washed
himself in a golden basin, and anointed his beard from vessels of gold;
how the Turkish army was disgracefully routed; how he ('Abdu'l Lateef)
was appointed to guard the Pasha's harem during the flight, etc., etc.
This narrative was occasionally attested as true by a negro slave in the
room, who had been with my host on that expedition.

The most lively fellow, however, of the party was one Hadj 'Abdallah of
Jerusalem, who has two wives, one a daughter of Ibn Simhhan, the other a
daughter of Abu Gosh!! His property in Jerusalem consists chiefly of
houses let out to Jews, whom he mimicked in their Spanish and German
dialects.

At length came supper; then sleep.

* * * * *

_Saturday_, 9_th_.--Asaad Ibn Simhhan and Hadj 'Abdallah rode with us to
_Mezra'ah_ to show us some ruins of an ancient city near it, called
_Hharrasheh_, where, as they told us, there are "figures of the children
of men" cut in the rock. This roused our curiosity immensely, and I felt
sure of success in such company; for though we were in a very wild and
unknown country, we had the second greatest of the Ibn Simhhan family
with us, and the Hadji was evidently popular among them all.

We sent on our luggage before us to Jerusalem by _Bait Unah_ and _Bait
Uksa_.

In rather less than an hour we reached _Mezra'ah_--the journey much
enlivened by the drollery and songs of Hadj 'Abdallah. Both he and Asaad
had capital mares and ornamented long guns. The latter was all dressed
in white--the turban, abbai, etc. His face was pale, and even his mare
white.

Arrived at the village, we all mounted to the roof of a house--the people
paying great reverence to Asaad. Gradually we found the whole population
surrounding us, and then closing nearer and nearer upon us. As the heat
of the sun increased, we descended to an arcade of the same house, at the
end of which there were some itinerant Christians mending shoes for the
people.