and they generally endeavor to mislead the European Consuls. My brother spent several hours every day at Kamîl Pasha's encampment, and accompanied his excellency when he visited the neighboring villages.
In the mean time I was rarely left alone. I was visited at all hours by Moslems, Christians, and Samaritans; the latter people interested me greatly. Priest Amran, a cheerful, shrewd-looking, well-informed man, between forty and fifty years of age, used to hear me read Arabic every morning. He gave me an interesting account of his little community, whose numbers amounted to only one hundred and ninety-six.[1] He said that there was great difficulty sometimes in arranging suitable marriages among them, for they never intermarry with strangers. The priest is always consulted on the subject; and as he or his aged father, Selâmeh, alone have power to celebrate a marriage, none can take place without their consent. He said, "At the present moment the marriageable men are more numerous than the marriageable girls. Our girls are all young, and I am very much troubled about it."
As an instance, he explained to me that Yakûb esh Shellabi, whose visit to England may be remembered by some of my readers, had been betrothed to Zora while she was yet a child. Yakûb was in England when Zora was marriageable; Amran did not permit her to wait for him, but married her to Habîb, a widower, who had one little girl, named Anithe. She was seven years old, and was to be given to Yakûb in the place of Zora, who was now her step-mother. He said, "This marriage has caused me great anxiety and much trouble."
Another man, who was only thirty, and for whom a girl could not be found, had married a widow fifty years of age, and he was now trying to persuade Priest Amran to allow him to put her away, that he might be betrothed to the priest's daughter, who was about eleven. He said,
- ↑ According to Wilson's account, they numbered one hundred and fifty in the year 1843.
