d relatives, to mourn over and take them away for burial. The
poor man, feeble as he was, called to these weeping groups; who, to
their astonishment and joy, drew out one survivor from the dreadful heap
of slain. No time was lost in conveying him home, and administering
every kind of assistance; but many months elapsed before he was able to
move from his house, so deep had been the injuries inflicted in his
fall.

In the course of his awful narrative, he told us, that the noise which
had so appalled him, as he lay among the blood-stained rocks, was indeed
the acting of a new cruelty of the usurper. After having witnessed the
execution of his sentence on the eighteen citizens, whose asseverations
he had determined not to believe, Nackee Khan immediately sent for a
devout man, called Saied Hassan, who was considered the sage of the
place, and, for his charities, greatly beloved by the people. "This
man," said the Khan, "being a descendant of the Prophet, must know the
truth, and will tell it me. He shall find me those who can and will pay
the money." But the answer given by the honest Saied being precisely the
same with that of the innocent victims who had already perished, the
tyrant's fury knew no bounds, and, rising from his seat, he ordered the
holy man to be rent asunder in his presence, and then thrown over the
rock, to increase the monument of his vengeance below.

It was the tumult of this most dreadful execution, which occasioned the
noise that drove the affrighted narrator to the shelter of any hole from
the eye of merciless man. But the cruel scene did not end here. Even in
the yet sensible ear of the Saied, expiring in agonies, his execrable
murderer ordered that his wife and daughters should be given up to the
soldiers; and that, in punishment of such universal rebellion in the
town, the whole place should be razed to the ground. But this last act
of blood on a son of the Prophet cost the perpetrator his life. For the
soldiers themselves, and the nobles who had been partisans of the
usurper, were so struck with horror at the sacrilegious murder, and
appalled with the threatened guilt of violating women of the sacred
family, that they believed a curse must follow the abettors of such a
man. The next step, in their minds, was to appease Heaven by the
immolation of the offender; and, in the course of that very night, a
band of his servants cut the cords of his tent, which, instantly falling
in upon him, afforde