Sa'ad's people, who number it is said 5000, resent,
with Arab asperity, the insult offered to their chief, and beat Fahd's,
who do not amount to 800.
Fahd, supported by the government, cuts off
Sa'ad's supplies. Both are equally wild and reckless, and-nowhere doth
the glorious goddess, Liberty, show a more brazen face than in this
Eastern
"Inviolate land of the brave and the free;"
both seize the opportunity of shooting troopers, of plundering
travellers, and of closing the roads. This state of things continued
till I left the Hijaz, when the Sharif of Meccah proposed, it was said,
to take the field in person against the arch-robber. And, as will
afterwards be seen in these pages, Sa'ad, had the audacity to turn back
the Sultan's Mahmil or litter-the ensign of Imperial power-and to shut
the road against its cortege, because the Pashas of Al-Madinah and of
the Damascus caravan would not guarantee his restitution to his former
dignity. That such vermin is allowed to exist proves the imbecility of
the Turkish government. The Sultan pays pensions in corn and cloth to
the very chiefs who arm their varlets against him; and the Pashas,
after purloining all they can, hand over to their enemies the means of
resistance. It is more than probable, that Abd al-Majid has never heard
a word of truth concerning Al-Hijaz, and that fulsome courtiers
persuade him that men there tremble at his name.
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