omparison, the
most gentlemanly person I have met with in the East. There is an
unaffected simplicity of manners, and a benevolence of countenance,
which makes one wonder how all the accounts of his actions, which we
may, I think, say we know to be true, could possibly be so. He made me
a present of three small cucumbers, at this time the greatest rarity;
and this may convey some idea to what extent the privations of the
poor have gone, when the Pasha can hardly command a cucumber, which,
with legumenous fruits of a similar kind, constitute a great portion
of the food of the poor in ordinary times. As I returned from the
Pasha a man levelled a gun at me, not with any intention to fire I
believe, but just to show that independent boldness which fears no
one, but dares to do what it chooses.

_September 6._--There is nothing new; but the uninterrupted stream of
misery is still swelling with its bitter waters: depredation and
scarcity increasing and advancing with pretty equal steps. There seems
to be signs of money beginning to fail from the treasury of the Pasha,
as his kanjaar (a dagger), richly studded with diamonds, was offered
for sale the other day. The palace of the Pasha, or rather its ruins,
are filled with Arnaouts, a mercenary band of soldiers, who employ
their time in making and drinking arrack, and knocking down the walls
of the palace, wherever they yield a hollow sound, in search of the
hidden treasures of the Pasha. In these countries it is a universal
custom to bury or build up in the walls of houses their treasures,
from the insecurity in which they always live.

Mr. Swoboda has received a letter from a friend of his in the Pasha's
camp, stating that there was a large pile of letters and parcels for
Europeans within the city, in the possession of the Pasha. This is
trying to us, but still it brings the hope that we may yet soon
receive intelligence of our friends.

It seems as if the angel of destruction was resting on this city as
on Babylon, to sweep it from the earth. They are actually pulling down
the roofs of the bazaars to sell and burn the wood, destroying
buildings for fuel, that a hundred times the worth of the wood will
not replace, and filling up the roads with rubbish so as to render
them scarcely passable. The state of anarchy which prevails must be
witnessed to be understood. If it were not that the soul feels it is
the Lord's province to bring order out of confusion and good out of
evi