“Although the return of these Emirs and Scheiks may entirely be attributed to Commodore Napier, the French merchants and priests in Beyrout and Lebanon had the assurance to arrogate to themselves the merit of the act, and widely spread this report in the mountains, which assertion, however, I as flatly contradicted, and completely succeeded in disproving this false and barefaced assertion. Shortly after this I rejoined my regiment at Gibraltar. “The Commodore, in thinking of his mountain friends, had not neglected the interests of the unfortunate Syrian soldiers, who, having been pressed into the Egyptian service, were, on the evacuation of Syria, unwillingly dragged after Ibrahim Pacha to the ‘Land of Bondage.’ The Commodore’s stipulation with Boghos Bey on the subject was, ‘that as soon as the evacuation of Syria should be effected, the whole of these men should be immediately sent back to their country.’ However, time wore on, and as Mehemet Ali showed no symptoms of fulfilling his promise, the writer was again sent to Egypt by the Foreign Office, with directions to exact from the Pacha the accomplishment of his engagement to Sir Charles Napier as to the Syrian soldiers, and to accompany those soldiers back to their country. Armed with ‘full powers[127],’ I left the Rock on the 26th of May, and arriving at Alexandria about a month later, at once set about the performance of my task, and this I very soon discovered would be no easy one. “In the first place, it was difficult to ascertain the exact number of surviving Syrians of Ibrahim’s army who had arrived in Egypt, particularly as every obstacle was industriously thrown in the way of obtaining such information. The Egyptian authorities estimated the number of survivors at so low a figure as 3000; however, from all the information I was able to collect, I concluded the sum total to amount to about 10,000 or 12,000; nor was I much out in this calculation, though the extremes of heat and cold, the griping hand of hunger and thirst during the winter retreat over the plains of the Haouran, and across the sands of the Desert, to say nothing of the plague which had been raging in Egypt since their return to the latter country;—all these circumstances combined,—had made sad havoc amongst their devoted bands.