The practice of intimidation thus rendered necessary is utterly hateful to an Englishman.  He finds himself forced to conquer his daily bread by the pompous threats of the dragoman, his very subsistence, as well as his dignity and personal safety, being made to depend upon his servant’s assuming a tone of authority which does not at all belong to him.  Besides, he can scarcely fail to see that as he passes through the country he becomes the innocent cause of much extra injustice, many supernumerary wrongs.  This he feels to be especially the case when he travels with relays.  To be the owner of a horse or a mule within reach of an Asiatic potentate, is to lead the life of the hare and the rabbit, hunted down and ferreted out.  Too often it happens that the works of the field are stopped in the daytime, that the inmates of the cottage are roused from their midnight sleep, by the sudden coming of a Government officer, and the poor husbandman, driven by threats and rewarded by curses, if he would not lose sight for ever of his captured beasts, must quit all and follow them.  This is done that the Englishman may travel.  He would make his way more harmless if he could, but horses or mules he must have, and these are his ways and means.

The town of Nablus is beautiful; it lies in a valley hemmed in with olive groves, and its buildings are interspersed with frequent palm-trees.  It is said to occupy the site of the ancient Sychem.  I know not whether it was there indeed that the father of the Jews was accustomed to feed his flocks, but the valley is green and smiling, and is held at this day by a race more brave and beautiful than Jacob’s unhappy descendants.

Nablus is the very furnace of Mahometan bigotry; and I believe that only a few months before the time of my going there it would have been quite unsafe for a man, unless strongly guarded, to show himself to the people of the town in a Frank costume; but since their last insurrection the Mahometans of the place had been so far subdued by the severity of Ibrahim Pasha, that they dared not now offer the slightest insult to an European.  It was quite plain, however, that the effort with which the men of the old school refrained from expressing their opinion of a hat and a coat was horribly painful to them.  As I walked through the streets and bazaars a dead silence prevailed; every man suspended his employment, and gazed on me with a fixed, glassy look, which seemed to say, “God is good, but how marvellous and inscrutable are His ways that thus He permits this white-faced dog of a Christian to hunt through the paths of the faithful.”