Of his father's house or the
surrounding domain, the boy invariably interfered to correct my
pretended mistake, and to assure me once again with a gentle
decisiveness of manner that the whole property was really and
exclusively mine, and that his father had not the most distant
pretensions to its ownership.
I received from my host much, and (as I now know) most true,
information respecting the people of the mountains, and their power
of resisting Mehemet Ali. The chief gave me very plainly to
understand that the mountaineers, being dependent upon others for
bread and gunpowder (the two great necessaries of martial life),
could not long hold out against a power which occupied the plains
and commanded the sea; but he also assured me, and that very
significantly, that if this source of weakness were provided
against, THE MOUNTAINEERS WERE TO BE DEPENDED UPON; he told me that
in ten or fifteen days the chiefs could bring together some fifty
thousand fighting men.
CHAPTER XXIX - SURPRISE OF SATALIEH
Whilst I was remaining upon the coast of Syria I had the good
fortune to become acquainted with the Russian Sataliefsky, {47} a
general officer, who in his youth had fought and bled at Borodino,
but was now better known among diplomats by the important trust
committed to him at a period highly critical for the affairs of
Eastern Europe.
