the Christians, and run together to the Christian quarter. Almost at the same moment the mob began to collect, arm, and run from the streets adjacent to the Christian quarter, the Shagur, a suburb on the south of the city, the Medân, a large suburb on the south-west, and a mile and a half to two miles from the Christian quarter, and from Salehiyeh, a large suburban village two miles off. They encouraged and excited one another by calling on their religion and Prophet, by imprecations on the infidels, and by crying," Arm, arm! kill, plunder, burn; the time of slaughter has come, the sun of slaughter has arisen!" and by similar expressions.

The women also stimulated the men by their cries and curses, and their prayers for success and victory. At first they were afraid of the troops, and avoided the places where they were stationed, but they soon found that they had nothing to fear from them. The Bashi-Bozouks of Salim, Aghael-Muhaineh, Mustafa Bey-el-Hawâsaly, and others, the Kurdish Irregulars under Muhammed Said Agha, and the Zaptiehs or police, were among the earliest and the most active in the work of murder and plunder. Many of the Bashi-Bozouks, as those under Hawâsaly, had been specially enrolled to preserve the peace of the city during the excitement. The people of the city were gradually joined during Monday evening and Tuesday by Druses from the Medân and from Jermana, a Druse village two miles from the city, and by Moslem peasants from several of the surrounding villages. But no Druse chief nor any regular Druse force from a distance took part in the affair.

The mob, with the exception of the Bashi-Bozouks, were very ill armed. Only a few had muskets, some had pistols, some had swords, a great number had battle-axes or daggers, but the great majority had only clubs or sticks. Perhaps not more than one in twenty had a gun, and many of the guns were of little value.

If the Bashi-Bozouks and Zaptiehs had done their duty the insurrection would have been put down at once; if they had only abstained from interfering no great effort would have been necessary to quell the mob. As it was, the troops, if they had acted with any vigour, would probably have encountered little opposition even from the Bashi-Bozouks.

The Christians made no defence. It is said that a Greek fired some shots on the mob, and that shots were fired from two houses by natives. With these exceptions, no resistance was offered to the murderers. The Christians were almost without arms. A few young men had fowlingpieces, and some few had pistols, but there was perhaps not a sword or axe among them.

The Russian consulate, in the centre of the Christian quarter, was one of the first houses attacked, plundered, and set on fire. His dragoman was killed. Two of his servants escaped by hiding in a cellar, where, though the house was burned over them, they remained four days without food or drink. Among the houses first broken into were those of the Dutch and Belgian vice-consul, the United States' vice-consul, and Mr. Frazier, an American missionary. The first of these had escaped with his family before the house was attacked. Mr. Frazier and his family had gone from the city before the outbreak. The American vice-consul was very severely wounded, and escaped with great difficulty. His two eldest sons were not in the house; his whole family were scattered, and it was several days before they were reunited. The houses of the richer Christians were all early assaulted; the mob being attracted by the prospect

of rich plunder. Then the houses adjoining them were attacked, and so the plundering, murder, conflagration and ruin spread more and more. The Greek church and patriarchate afforded plunder of great value in church ornament and plate, the rich dresses of the clergy, the patriarch's plate, and the money in the treasury.

It was guarded by soldiers on the day of the outbreak till after sunset, when it was broken into, rifled, and burned, and a large number of persons were murdered in it.

The course of proceeding was generally the same. The mob broke the door of the house with axes, rushed in, sought first for the men, murdered any they could find with clubs, sticks, axes, daggers, swords, and using sometimes fire-arms also. Then they plundered the house of furniture, clothes, stores of food, the materials of trades, and everything in it, searching carefully for money or valuables which might be concealed, and threatening and terrifying the women and children to make them tell where the men were, and if anything was hidden. They searched the women lest they might have ornaments or money concealed in their clothes, and they generally took away any articles of dress of any value which the women or children happened to have on. They very generally seized the young girls and the younger women in the house, and often took them off and kept them for a time. Finally, the house was set on fire.

The better armed, the more respectable, and the more bold and violent of the murderers, generally appropriated to themselves the more valuable articles in the house, and then left it for another. But they were followed by successive parties of the lower rabble, the unarmed, the poor, the weak, the women, and even children, and they stripped the house of all that remained. Not only the contents of the house, but doors, windows, window-shutters, and the panelling on the walls, were carried off. Even firewood, charcoal, the marble of the floors, and the timber of the roofs, were in many cases taken away. Besides what men, women, and children carried away, camels, horses, mules, and donkeys were employed to remove plunder.

At the moment of the outbreak, a great number of merchants, shopkeepers, Government clerks, the clerks of the Moslem merchants, and some tradesmen, as stone-cutters and masons, were at their business in the Moslem part of the city. When the mob began to collect, a part of these attempted to reach their houses, some with a feeble hope of assisting their families, and some because they knew of no other place of safety: some succeeded in getting to their homes, and some were killed in the streets. Another part fled to the English, French, and Prussian Consulates, to the house of the Emir Abd-el-Kader, or to the houses of Moslem partners or acquaintances, often, in their terror and despair, forcing themselves into houses where they were little welcome. Others concealed themselves in the khans in which or near to which they happened to be at the moment, and they were generally conducted to the old citadel next day by the troops. Had all the men been in the Christian quarter and in their own houses, as they were during the Beiram, the slaughter of the Christians would have been greater than it was, perhaps much greater.

Of the men who were in the houses or in the Christian quarter some fled to the churches, to the Austrian Consulate, or to the houses of their richer neighbours; but none of these places afforded safety. Many hid in closets, necessaries, or cellars, or on the roofs of the houses, and they were

almost all discovered and most of them murdered. A number of them went down into the wells, and though a deep and narrow well was a difficult, unpleasant, and dangerous hiding-place, nearly all those who went down into them were saved, and were taken out after remaining three, four, or five days, without food, and enduring all the inconveniences of such a retreat. A few escaped by passing over the roofs from house to house, and hiding at last among the ruins of houses already plundered and burned. A few got out of the city, but of these the peasants afterwards killed some and compelled others to become Moslems. Every possible expedient for concealment or flight was adopted. A few disguised themselves as women, but they were generally detected. A few also took off their outer clothes, assumed the appearance of rioters, and went off carrying furniture as if they were plunderers. Some fled from one Moslem house to another by day and by night, and though many perished in doing so, a good many finally reached a place of safety. In such perplexity, terror, and danger, and amid such scenes of plunder, outrage, murder, and fire, did those saved make their escape. To the fears which every one had for himself was added anxiety about the fate of his family and friends. Of the 2000 families of Damascenes involved in the massacre, hardly one family escaped all together and reached a place of safety without being separated. Generally one member of the family did not know what had happened to the others, and days passed before the survivors all met again.

From about two o'clock P.M. on the 9th of July, the plundering and burning of houses, the murders, and the outrages committed on women, went on incessantly till about two hours after sunset. During most of

that time several thousands of rioters were actively engaged. The most valuable part of the plunder was secured, and the murders were very numerous. Most of the mob retired from the Christian quarter during the night, but many remained, and the work of destruction never entirely ceased. The fire was by that time extensively spread, and several hundred houses must have been in flames. At daylight next morning the Moslems returned to the Christian quarter in as great numbers as on the previous afternoon, and the plundering, burning, and murder went on throughout the day, diminishing, however, towards the evening, because little remained to be attacked. On this day almost all the shops of the Christians in the principal bazaars were broken open and plundered. By sunset there was nothing left to the Christians but the stones and fragments of the timber of burning houses, and a few houses and rooms which the flames had not yet reached, and there remained no Christians in the quarter except those who were effectually concealed in the wells or amid the ruins of the houses.

On Wednesday morning, a false and very improbable report was spread, that some Christians had fired from a Moslem's house on Moslems in the street, and killed two of them. The object of this report was soon evident from what followed. A mob of Moselms from Salehiyeh, brought, it is said, by Sheik Abdullah-el-Haleby, under pretence of putting out the fire, commenced a new and very horrid work, in which others soon joined them. They went round the different quarters in which Christians had taken refuge, demanded that they should be given up, and either killed them as soon as they appeared in the street, and dragged their bodies to the Christian quarter, or first conducted them alive to the ruins, and killed

them there. The number massacred in this brutal and shocking way, after their property and houses were destroyed, and after that they had hoped that the bitterness of death was passed, it is impossible to ascertain with any exactness, unless the Government were to institute a bona fide and rigid investigation in the districts of the city which were the scenes of these horrible murders. But it is certain that several hundreds of those who vainly hoped that they had found a refuge, perished on that day, and that very few of those in private houses escaped, except such as consented to embrace Mahometanism.

After that day, Wednesday, the 11th July, there were only a few murders, because no Christians remained within reach of the murderers. Doors, timber, and marble were carried off from the ruins, but not to any great extent. The fire continued till the beginning of the following week, when it almost ceased for want of materials, though for some ten days longer it was partially maintained by setting on fire any portions of houses which here and there remained. The houses in Damascus, and especially the poor houses, owing to the way in which they are built, do not readily burn. Accidental fires are very rare, and almost all originate in the establishments of cooks or bakers-seldom in private houses. As there was a perfect calm during the massacre, the fire would have gone out of itself without spreading far, if it had not been constantly kept up by setting fire

to additional houses.

The work of the plunderers was complete. Nothing to be found in the Christian quarter was left if it seemed worth carrying away. Many had concealed some of their more valuable effects under the floors or in secret recesses, closets, presses, or holes in the wall, or by throwing them into wells; most of what was thrown into wells was preserved, but almost everything else was discovered and taken away. The shops in the bazaars were plundered, but the khans were not attacked, and the property which Christians had in them was not disturbed. The consulates of England, France, and Prussia, owing to their situation in the Moslem quarter, to their being guarded, and to other special circumstances, were not plundered. Besides these, a house in the Moslem quarter in which an Englishman lived, escaped.

About 1500 houses were robbed; one private and unguarded house was left untouched. Some 200 houses adjacent to or among Moslem houses were plundered and greatly injured, but not burned. All the rest of the quarter, to the number of 1200 or 1300 houses, with all the churches, schools, convents, workshops, and khans, is now heaps of ruins. In many places, in pulling down walls and cutting down ornamental trees, there are traces of laborious efforts to destroy even what the fire spared. The lowest and perhaps the most accurate estimate of the loss of property is between 300,000 and 400,000 purses, equivalent to 1,250,000l. to 1,500,000l. To this might well be added the loss resulting from the compulsory idleness of the whole Christian population while the settlement of affairs is pending.

The number of persons murdered will never be exactly ascertained.~ Of hundreds, it is only known that they disappeared. The survivors are so scattered, and so occupied with other cares and anxieties, that it would be almost impossible to make an accurate list of the missing. An estimate may be made of the number of males in Damascus on the day of the insurrection, and of the probable proportion which the murdered bore to the survivors. The number of Christian males resident in the city were

about 8000 to 9000, and of refugees from the surrounding country from 2000 to 3000. Thus the whole number of males would be between 10,000 and 12,000, and of this one-third may be deducted for children under fourteen years of age. Of the remaining 7500 to 8000, probably more than a third, or about 3000, were murdered. This is the lowest estimate yet given, but it is perhaps within a few hundreds of the truth.

But it is difficult to speak with confidence, for there was great diversity in the fate of families and sects. The proportion of murders was greater among the members of the Greek Church than among those of any other sect, for their houses were exposed to the first attack of the mob. Many families did not lose a member; many lost every adult male. In the house next to the Russian consulate on the north, the father and his three sons were murdered, the women were abused, and the house was, as usual, plundered and burned. Four brothers who lived together abandoned their house before it was attacked, and were separated in the streets; the two elder were murdered, the two younger escaped. Two men lived in one house; one went down into the well and was saved, the other hid on the roof, and was killed. In another house, where four unmarried working men lived, two of them were killed, and the other two were badly wounded and left for dead. In the Protestant church, four men and several women took refuge. One of the men was disguised as a woman, and escaped from the church, but was wounded in the street; the other three concealed themselves, but were discovered, and two of them were killed. Some thirty men were murdered in the house of a Greek priest. In the house of a working man, who was in Beyrout at the time, eleven of his neighbours were killed in the presence of his wife. In the premises of the Greek church and patriarchate there were several hundred refugees from Rasheya, and many Christians from the adjoining houses. The mob broke in after sunset of the first day of the insurrection, and the slaughter, both of citizens and strangers, was very great. There was a large number of the refugees in houses connected with the Armenian convent, and there also a great number were murdered. In the streets and houses near the house of Mustafa Bey-el-Hawasaly, a great many dead bodies were left. The Franciscan monks were all killed. The Lazarists were saved by the Emir Abd-el-Kader. About thirty ministers of religion, including the Franciscan and a Protestant missionary, were killed. Of the native priests only five or six escaped.

It was not out of pity that the murderers spared the children. Had it been so, they would, probably, not have butchered old, feeble men as helpless as children. It is a doctrine of Mahometanism, founded on a saying of the Prophet, and held by all Sunnites, that every child is from birth a believer in Islam, the true religion, and that unbelieving parents make it, as it grows up, a Jew, or a Christian, or an idolater, as the case may be. Children, therefore, being Moslems, it is unlawful to kill them; but it was doubtless intended to take possession of them and bring them up as Moslems. Several children who have been restored to their parents were circumcised.

Unlike the Druses, who generally respected the women, the Mahometans of Damascus acted most brutally towards them. The number of young girls, and of married women and mothers, abused by them, was, perhaps, greater than that of the men murdered. A great number were taken to houses in the town, or to the villages, and even to remote villages, and were