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Updated: May 26, 2025
The huntsmen were the cooks, but the greatest order was preserved; and though the Emirs and the great Sheikhs, heads of houses, retiring again to their divans, occupied themselves with their nargilehs, many a mookatadgi mixed with the servants and the slaves, and delighted in preparing this patriarchal banquet, which indeed befitted a castle and a forest.
The next afternoon a riot occurred around the house of the Two Strange People and the school they had built; and Shelek Pasha would have had his spite of them, and his will of the donkey-market, the school, and the cotton-fields, but for Abdul Huseyn and three Sheikhs, friends of his at a price who addressed the crowd and quieted them.
"Upon one of the camels, in a palanquin such as the great sheikhs use to carry their women, there are two people, protected against the storm by curtains. They are silent, listening to the roaring of the wind. One of them is you." "Two people!" "Two people." "But who is the other?" "He cannot see. It is as if the blackness of the storm were deeper round about the other and hid the other from him.
These were the princes Kais and Abdullah Shehaab, and Francis El Kazin, whom the Levantines called Caseno, and the principal members of the Young Syria party; some of them beardless Sheikhs, but all choicely mounted, and each holding on his wrist a falcon; for this was the first day of the year that they might fly.
What they would be in the hot weather, it is difficult to say. The supplies, for the most part, come from a considerable distance, but appear to be abundant; and when at length a good understanding shall have taken place between the British Government and the neighbouring sheikhs, the markets will be furnished with every thing that the countries in the vicinity produce.
The administration of police, of the revenue, and indeed the whole internal government of Lebanon, are in the hands of the mookatadgis, or rather of the most powerful individuals of this class, who bear the titles of Emirs and Sheikhs, some of whom are proprietors to a very great extent, and many of whom, in point of race and antiquity of established family, are superior to the aristocracy of Europe.
The defeat and terrible slaughter of the Arabs at El-Teb and Tamai seem to have been taken as an earnest of the intention of the British to reconquer the Soudan, and so to have decided many hitherto friendly, or at least neutral, Sheikhs to throw in their lot with the Mahdi.
I've ridden the gentle camel at the rate of sixty and seventy miles a day sort of sweeping through the land, making treaties, giving presents, freeing slaves, appointing governors and sheikhs- el-beled, doing it as if we owned the continent. He mesmerised 'em, simply mesmerised 'em-till we got here. I don't know what happened then. Now we're distinctly rating low, the laugh is on us somehow.
Returning to where the troops still lay, I found that a fresh movement was afoot. Report had been brought that hundreds of lesser sheikhs and leaders were in the town ready to surrender with their followers if their lives would be spared. The assurance sought was quickly conveyed to them.
I had listened to the Arab sheikhs, friends of the Doctor, advising them in mild tones to give them up; I had witnessed the mutineer's stubbornness; and it was then, on the burzani of Sayd bin Majid's house, that I took advantage to open my mind on the subject, not only for the benefit of the stubborn slaves, but also for the benefit of the Arabs; and to tell them that it was well that I had found Livingstone alive, for if they had but injured a hair of his head, I should have gone back to the coast, to return with a party which would enable me to avenge him.
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