Some months later, the cattle of a Protestant strayed, and while driving them home he was met by one of their persecutors, of the house of Beshoor, who, with some savage Nusairiyeh, threw him on the ground, stamped upon him, and drew a sword, threatening to kill him if he did not desist from his unclean religion. They dared not do more through fear of witnesses. Again, the plowmen of this same house plowed up the wheat belonging to the Protestants, ruining their hopes of a coming harvest, and leaving them without means to pay their taxes; which they must pay or go to prison. They also gathered all the olives of the Protestants, reducing them to the greatest straits for the means of living. The Moslem governor received large bribes to exterminate the sect, and would give them no hearing, but quartered his soldiers on them, who ate up all their scanty food, and distrained even their miserable cooking utensils, that they might sell them for barley for their horses. Many lived from day to day on what they could beg, or borrow. Still, after a year of such trials, they remained firm; which is the more wonderful, as only a few of them gave evidence of piety, and the time had not come for organizing them into a church. The school was doubtless helpful, being a decided success. Even the shepherds took tracts and primers, and studied them while tending their flocks. In January, 1867, the whole Protestant community of Safeeta were arrested, men, women, and children, and imprisoned in a small room, and a fire of cut straw was made on the floor to torture them with smoke. This wanton cruelty was based on a false demand made on them for money. Their sufferings were so great that they were finally released. In the evening, while assembled for worship, with their native preacher, government horsemen broke open and plundered their houses, and in the night drove them all, old and young, mothers and children, boys and girls, into the wilderness. The terrible experience of this people in the summer of 1869, somewhat more than two years later, is too suggestive and interesting to be passed in silence. I give the facts as related by Mr. Samuel Jessup.