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LETTERS FROM PROFESSOR CARLYLE 



you cannot travel to any distance without a very considerable escort ; 

 had it not been for a caravan of Armenian pilgrims, consisting of 

 four or five hundred persons who were going to Jerusalem to celebrate 

 Easter, whom we joined, I should not have been able to have gotten 

 to that city at all. 



The whole of these sects at present seem to have an equal hatred 

 to the Turks and to the French ; to the former for their constant 

 oppression ; to the latter for their horrid cruelties they committed in 

 their return from Acre. I myself saw under the walls of Jaffa the 

 mangled and half-buried remains of 5,000 Turks, and near 500 Chris- 

 tians whom Buonaparte massacred upon the shore. The putrid smell 

 was scarcely dissipated after the intervention of a year. Kleber (as did 

 several of the other officers) refused to have any hand in so shocking 

 a transaction, but miscreants were not wanting to put in execution 

 (with every aggravation of cruelty that could have been practised 

 by a Nero, as I was repeatedly told by eye-witnesses,) the commands 

 of the First Consul. In consequence of all this, the English are 

 every where in Syria looked up to as preservers. When we returned 

 to Jerusalem after a little excursion in the neighbourhood, we were 

 met by a company of Christian women who sung in Arabic a kind of 

 gratulatory song, the burden of which was " the English are going 

 to the holy city, and they are the Christians after all." 



With regard to the opinions of the different serfs respecting the 

 fulfilment of the prophecies, I had not, my Lord, any opportunity 

 of learning their ideas, as, except the Superior and a few other of the 

 monks in the convent of the Terra-Sancta, and the Patriarchs of 

 the Armenians and Greeks, the rest of the Christians, (particularly 

 of the two last-named sects,) seemed so deplorably ignorant, that it 

 was hopeless to converse with any of them on such subjects. 



I need not say that I was much gratified in hearing that Your 

 Lordship found my letters at all interesting ; but I must not let so 

 flattering a declaration induce me to trespass too long upon your 

 many other engagements. 



I. D. Carlyle. 



