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similar message to that from Benhadad king of Syria, to the 

 IsraeHtish monarch, then besieged by him in Samaria. He sent 

 messengers to Ahah, saying, "thy silver and thy gold is mine; 

 thy wives also and thy children, even the goodliest of them, are 

 mine; and thou shalt deliver them into my hands. I will send 

 my servants unto thee tomorrow about this time; they shall search 

 thine house, and the houses of thy servants; and it shall be, that 

 whatsoever is pleasant in thine ej'es, they shall put it into their 

 hands and take it away \" 



Equally insolent were the messages of the Gracia chiefs to 

 me, both verbally and in writing. Their insolence in prosperity 

 was only equalled by their meanness in adversity. Very similar 

 to the pusillanimous conduct of the tyrannizing Benhadad, when 

 defeated by the monarch of Israel, to whom he had so lately sent 

 his insolent demands. On this reverse of fortune he sent his ser- 

 vants with sackcloth upon their loins, and ropes on their necks, 

 with a supplication to spare his life; a request with which the 

 king of Israel imprudently complied. This hardly exceeds the 

 insolence of the Gracias before the conquest of Mandwa, nor their 

 abject behaviour afterwards. Many of the letters and messages 

 from their princes, delivered at the gates of Dhuboy, were not in 

 spirit, but in words, replete with expressions of impregnable rocks, 

 swelling rivers, birds of omen soaring aloft, and a variety of fioura- 

 tive language so exactly resembling that on ancient record, that I 

 cannot omit it. Gomanny Sihng, especially, gave me to understand 

 that "he dwelt in the clefts of the rock, on the height of the hiil; 

 that he had made his nest high as the eagle, it was the habitation 

 of the strong. Although we should come up as a lion from the 



