CHAPTER LY. 
RISE, DECLINE, AND FALL OF YUSEF BADRA. 
Nations have had their good and evil fortune, and, accord¬ 
ing to all the evidences of history, the vicissitudes of prosperity 
and adversity which have attended them, have invariably re¬ 
sulted from in their own good or evil conduct. So we find it 
even more immediately apparent in the case of individuals. 
The fate of my renowned dragoman, friend, and leader, Yusef 
Badra, furnishes, perhaps, one of the most striking illustrations 
on record. 
I have endeavored to show in the course of this narrative 
that Yusef was, by nature and education, fierce and unrelent¬ 
ing in his prejudices ; that the two ruling prejudices of his life 
were, an innate hostility to the female sex, and an insatiable 
thirst for the blood of his fellow-creatures; that to restrain him 
from the indulgence of these unfortunate propensities, was my 
constant endeavor throughout the entire journey. From the 
time of leaving Jerusalem, this task, partly of friendship and 
partly of self-preservation, became daily more arduous ; and so 
much trouble did it occasion me, that I often felt disposed to 
abandon him to his fate. All the nieces, whom he failed to 
meet on the road after leaving Damascus, he met in Jerusa¬ 
lem. Despising the whole sex, as he did, he nevertheless felt 
it to he his duty to call upon his relations, for the sake of his 
deceased uncle, whose memory he considered himself bound to 
honor. Now, these nieces, as well as all that he had previ¬ 
ously met in Baalbek and elsewhere, knowing his repugnance to 
the sex, always maliciously contrived to make him drunk with 
arrack, so as to humble him in the eyes of the world. It was 
entirely in vain that I represented to him the weakness of suf- 
