We have just heard, that Major T----'s brother, and the gentlemen who left Mousul were pursued by 500 Arabs; but all escaped except a horse of the Capidji,[13] an officer of the Sultan's, which was laden with money, collected by his master for the government at Constantinople; he could not go fast enough, so he fell into the hands of the Arabs.
[13] A Capidji Bashi is a messenger of the Porte, to collect money, or bear especial messages of any sort.
The Roman Catholic bishop has received accounts that Algiers is taken by the French, and also some forts in its neighbourhood. Aleppo is quiet, though the Arabs are in the neighbourhood.
Our new Moolah has expressed his surprise at the contents of the New Testament, and wonders how Mohammedans can speak against it as they do. He intends coming to our Armenian schoolmaster on Sundays to read it with him; may the Lord most graciously send down his Spirit upon them, that the one who undertakes to teach what he does not know, may, by discovering his ignorance, be led to the fountain of all wisdom; and may the other learn to love him whose holy, heavenly, and divine name he has blasphemed.
The cholera is much about, but the Lord preserves us all safe.
The Pasha has made up his differences with the Arab tribe, and all the troops have returned, except those under Mr. Littlejohn, which still remain out for fear of an attack before all the harvest is thrashed and brought in.
There are symptoms of great fear on the part of the Pasha, that a struggle is actually going on among those around him for superseding him in his Pashalic, in which they have apparently much probability of success, as the Porte has been greatly injured by his unwillingness to meet her necessities and afford her pecuniary help. Our security, however, is in this, that amidst all, the Lord knoweth them that are his, and will defend them amidst all turmoils and in the most troublous times--in this we find peace and quietness.
The poor men who came to endeavour to obtain from the Pasha here the re-institution of the Syrian patriarch in those churches in Merdin, from which he had been ejected by the Roman Catholic bishop, are now returning without success, but carrying back with them two boxes of Arabic and Syrian New Testaments to the Patriarch. May the Lord water them by his most Holy Spirit, so that they may become the ground of living churches, instead of those of stone which they have lost.