During My Stay At Nablus I Took Up My Quarters At The House Of The
Greek "Papa" As He Is Called, That Is, The Greek Priest.
The
priest himself had gone to Jerusalem upon the business I am going
to tell you of, but his wife remained at Nablus, and did the
honours of her home.
Soon after my arrival a deputation from the Greek Christians of the
place came to request my interference in a matter which had
occasioned vast excitement.
And now I must tell you how it came to happen, as it did
continually, that people thought it worth while to claim the
assistance of a mere traveller, who was totally devoid of all just
pretensions to authority or influence of even the humblest
description, and especially I must explain to you how it was that
the power thus attributed did really belong to me, or rather to my
dragoman. Successive political convulsions had at length fairly
loosed the people of Syria from their former rules of conduct, and
from all their old habits of reliance. The violence and success
with which Mehemet Ali crushed the insurrection of the Mahometan
population had utterly beaten down the head of Islam, and
extinguished, for the time at least, those virtues and vices which
had sprung from the Mahometan faith. Success so complete as
Mehemet Ali's, if it had been attained by an ordinary Asiatic
potentate, would have induced a notion of stability. The readily
bowing mind of the Oriental would have bowed low and long under the
feet of a conqueror whom God had thus strengthened.
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