shocks had been strongly felt at 'Akka, Sûr, and Saida, and slightly in the interior.
All my visitors had some story to tell me about former earthquakes, and especially about the terrible one which occurred in 1837, when Safed and Tiberias were destroyed, and when Hâifa was for three days almost deserted, and people lived outside in the open air, not venturing to enter their houses, the shocks being so frequent. The heavens, they said, were dark at midday, and the sea had a strange red tinge. Some people went so far as to declare that "its waters were turned into blood," and all agreed that it lost its saline flavor, and had rather a sweet taste.
On the 22d of October there were steady showers of rain during the day, and in the evening I watched one of the grandest thunder-storms I had ever seen; it was followed by a wild storm of wind and rain, which lasted all night. Soon after sunrise the wind ceased, and there was a great calm; but the streets of Hâifa were like canals, and some of the old walls, which had been damaged by the earthquake, were quite broken down. In the gardens many of the finest trees had been uprooted or stripped of their branches: the pliant palm-trees seem best calculated to resist the fury of these equinoctial gales.
I spent the afternoon of the 23d of October with the young widow of Ibrahîm Sekhali. She was still mourning bitterly over her loss. I tried to excite her interest, and succeeded in gaining her attention by telling her about the home of my childhood and my school-days. She seemed for a while to forget her own troubles, in wondering how I could leave my parents and my country, and having left them, how I could consent to stay alone in a town where there were none of my "own people."
We were thus talking, when her black slave, who was sitting on a mat at needle-work in the sunshine close to the open door, suddenly rose, and, kissing my hands, said, "There is joy for you! there is joy!—your brother, the Consul, has even now arrived. I hear the sounds of many
