now enjoys*;' We often conversed on the subject of the existing war
with the Greeks, and they manifested at all times extreme curiosity
to know what part we should take, in the event of the arrival of any
Greek vessel off their port. Our answers were always satisfactory to
them.; and a report of the English being favorably inclined towards
the Porte having by some means reached them, we were in subsequent
interviews addressed as Sahab, or ally.
This confidence in our intentions was not, however, so strongly felt
among the lower classes of peopleat least it did not appear to have
been so on the occasion which we are about to mention.
Some vague reports of the successes of the Greeks, and their merciless
treatment of the prisoners which they had taken, having
reached the people of Bengazi, they became, on a sudden, .uncommonly
nervous, and were in momentary apprehension of an invasion,
and of an indiscriminate slaughter of themselves and their families.
The appearance of the Adventure, about this time, on their coast,
which had not been visited by a'man-of-war for a long time before,
together with the arrival, soon after, of our party, whose real objects
were for the most part unintelligible to them, added to the circum*
Previously to these measures, the town was constantly subject to the attacks of the
-neighbouring tribes of marauding Arabs, who, as occasion offered, made incursions into
it without ceremony, and retired with their, plunder-into the interior. The garrison
and citizens opposed them as well as they could, and many a desperate skirmish frequently
ensued ; but as Bengazi is unprovided with walls, it Was difficult to prevent a
surprise, and the people lived in continual fear. Mahommed Bey began by building a
round fort on the sandy tract to the eastward of the town, and then collecting his forces,
carried the war into their territory, and after making severe examples of the most refractory,
succeeded in reducing the Bedouins to subjection.
stance of their having seen us employed in making plans and drawings
of their fort and harbour, all contributed to strengthen their
suspicions and their fears; and they soon began to consider our
residence among them as, in some way, connected with the Greeks.
While their minds were thus prepared, it unluckily happened one
evening just before sunset, that some hard clouds had formed themselves
on the horizon, into shapes which they conceived to resemble
ships under sail; the appearance soon excited the greatest alarm,
and many an eager eye was fixed upon the formidable armada which
imagination had suggested to the terrified Arabs*. Before they
could be satisfied that there was no foundation for their fears, it was
too dark to distinguish anything more; and the greatest confusion
very shortly prevailed in every part of Bengazi. The men now
began to prepare their fire-arms, and the signal to assemble was
everywhere repeated; the women and children running about in the
greatest terror, calling out that the Christians were coming to murder
them!
The disturbance was not long unknown to our party, for our door
shortly became the centre of confusion; a mob of Arabs was very
soon collected about it, who manifested the most hostile feeling, and
the street rang with invectives against the Nasdrasf. I t would
have gone hard with any Christian who had been found unarmed in
* About the same time some high poles had been erected- by our party, on the sand
hills to the eastward of the town, as objects from which to take angles for the survey ;
and these were now considered to have been placed there as signals to regulate the
(notions of the enemy’s fleet.
t The Arab term for all who profess Christianity*
2R