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Mr. and Mrs. Benton joined the mission in the latter part of the year. In the spring of 1847, the Protestants of Hasbeiya sent one of their number to Constantinople, to lay their grievances before the Sultan. The agent was informed, that the Pasha of Damascus had been instructed to protect the Protestants.
He then visited Achha, a village inhabited by the Druses, upon the opposite side of the mountain; Rasheiya, the residence of the Emir; and Hasbeiya, where he paid a visit to the Greek Bishop of Szur or Szeida, to whom he carried letters of recommendation.
The most remarkable call for preaching, at this time, was at Hasbeiya, a village of four or five thousand inhabitants, situated at the foot of Mount Hermon.1 Druzes and members of the Greek Church made up the population, with some Greek Catholics, Moslems, and Jews. The village lay about fifty miles southeast of Beirût, bordering on the country of the Bedawîn, with whom was its principal trade.
The districts of Rasheiya and Hasbeiya, at the foot of Mount Hermon whose summit at the time was hidden by snow were the first explored by Seetzen, for the reason that they were the least known in Syria.
The Protestants at Hasbeiya, under favor of the Druzes, who then had the upper hand in all political matters, and under the successful pastorate of Mr. Wortabet, now built a neat, substantial church, forty-five feet by thirty-five, with a basement for schools and prayer meetings. Mr. and Mrs. Foot left the mission in the autumn of 1854, on account of her illness, but too late to save her life.
The Barada is a short stream, its entire course from the plain of Zebdany not much exceeding forty miles. But the true highest present source of the river is the spring near Hasbeiya, called Nebaes-Hasbany, or Eas-en-Neba.
While they were absent on the mountain to recover from illness, the result of confinement, anxiety, and a suffocating sirocco, the "Young Men" rose in arms, against the Protestant brethren. They virtually took the government of the place into their own hands, and the Protestant men fled to escape their murderous violence. Returning to Hasbeiya, Mr.
Protestant communities at Ibel near Hasbeiya, and at Rasheiya over the mountain, survived the severe persecutions to which they were subjected by the combined efforts of bishops, priests, and local governors; until the governors, who had been the real cause of most of the difficulties, were summoned to Damascus, through the agency of the English Ambassador at Constantinople, to answer for their conduct.
Upon the establishment of the Hasbeiya station, in 1851, he took up his residence at Hasbeiya as preacher, and was ordained at Beirût in the spring of 1853. The honorary degree of Doctor of Medicine was conferred upon him by Yale College, in view of an article from his pen on the fevers of Syria, published in the American Journal of Medical Science.
The result of this war, as aforetime, was the destruction of their villages and their power; and the Patriarch sank under the disappointment and died. Moreover the party in Hasbeiya, which stoned the Protestants and their teachers, were driven out of the place by the Druzes, and great numbers of them killed, so that the "Young Men's" party seemed to be broken to pieces.1
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