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Kennedy, from the Foreign Offices at home, was staying at the Consul-General's at Beyrout, so we thought it right to invite him to Damascus, and he accepted our invitation a few weeks later. As this was an official visit we made every preparation. I met him at Shtora, the half-way house between Beyrout and Damascus, and travelled with him in the diligence.
At this time, the beginning of 1838, Lady Hester was anxiously expecting an answer from Sir Francis Burdett about her property, and, hearing from the English consul at Sayda that a packet had arrived for her from Beyrout, which was to be delivered into her own hands, her sanguine mind was filled with the hope of coming prosperity.
At last we float off two lighters full of infected, though respectable, material, towed by oarsmen of most scurvy appearance, but free from every suspicion of taint. The sea is still rough, the sun is hot, and a fat Jewess becomes sea-sick. An Italian Jew rails at the boatmen ahead, in the Neapolitan patois, for the distance is long, the Quarantine being on the land-side of Beyrout.
Upon this the tortures were again repeated, and Abulafia, to save himself, embraced the Mohammedan religion. "In this manner they treated all the prisoners who have been for one month in this misery. In Beyrout and in Damascus the Jews are not permitted to go out.
There had been no battle, but both parties were in daily expectation of hostilities. The plague, it was reported, had broken out in Damascus, and the country, both around that city and Beyrout, had begun to be in a very disturbed state. Several travellers had been robbed, but the post still passed.
An instinct warned me to have a change of air, and I determined to go to Beyrout. Two hours out of Damascus I was able to rise, and at the half-way house at Buka'a I could eat, and when I arrived at Beyrout after fourteen hours' journey I felt almost well.
These two testimonials are now, with many others, preserved in the Lecture Hall of the College in Ramsgate. October 11th. Colonel C. H. Churchill paid them a visit at Ramsgate previous to his leaving England for the East. The Colonel having married a young widow at Damascus was very anxious to return to her at Beyrout, where he intends residing, having adopted Syria as his country.
At Beyrout I had several conversations with a most intelligent Armenian gentleman, from Constantinople, occupying an important governmental position. Having under my charge several young ladies travelling for study and instruction, our conversation very naturally turned upon our American educational systems, about which he was much better informed than many members of our public school boards.
On the ship coming down from Beyrout I had a conversation with a man who claimed to have been naturalized in the United States, and to have gone to Syria to visit his mother, but, according to his story, he was arrested and imprisoned by the Turks.
North of Beyrout it struck eastward through the gorge of the Nahr el-Kelb, and took the city of Kumidi. Then it made its way by Shenir or Hermon to Hamath, which surrendered, and from thence still northward to "the plain" of Aleppo. In the south of Palestine, in what was afterwards the territory of Judah, Ramses made yet another campaign.
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