"I reached Safeeta a few days after, and found that those who had stood firm had been obliged to flee for safety, and did not dare return until I went there. The wrath of their persecutors seems to have reached its height, and the poor people know not what to do. Appeal to the government seems useless, for it is from the government that their chief oppressor gets his power to persecute. All who went back came to call on me, and most of them attended the services. They said, in palliation of their course, 'We are flesh and blood, and have families to support. We have waited for deliverance for years, and now Tamir (the chief oppressor) says, Come back and I will restore to you all; remain as you are, and I will strip you of the little you have left, and drive you out of the country. And so we went back, but our hearts are with you, and we will come here too, though they compelled our bodies to go with them.' One woman showed a striped gown, threw it on the ground, and trampling on it said, with tears in her eyes, 'With that they bought my husband.' Some of the women, with tears and entreaties, tried to keep their husbands and friends from going, telling them that death was better."[1] [1] _Missionary Herald_, 1869, pp. 407-409. Twenty men were standing firm at Safeeta in February of the following year, though there had been little abatement of persecution. In April Dr. Jessup wrote, that it had just terminated, and the brethren at the Tripoli station had good hopes that there would be peace in that long persecuted community. This was owing, in great measure, to the interference of the American and English Consuls-general, and their influence with the Governor-general of Syria. The people of Hums becoming dissatisfied with their pastor, Suleeba, his connection was dissolved, three years after his settlement. The church remained in a divided condition for a year or more, without any celebration of the Lord's Supper. In the summer of 1869, Mr. Samuel Jessup visited the city, and finding the Protestants in a better state of feeling, invited the communicants to assemble at the Lord's table. All came and seemed to enjoy it as a season of rest and refreshment, after a long and weary wandering. They were ready to take a native pastor who suited them, and pay the larger part of his salary. They needed one well acquainted with the historical defenses of the Gospel, because of the inroads of European Jesuits and French infidel literature. Suleeba found demands for his faithful labors in other places. "The news," says Dr. Jessup, "from 'scattered and peeled' Safeeta and from distracted Hums, is alike cheering, and indicative of progress in the right direction."