“Ibrahim Pacha did not appear pleased when I gave him Mehemet Ali’s letter. He was agitated, and it took him five minutes to read it, although it only consisted of four lines. Whilst he was thus employed, his camel-rider and chief groom were also endeavouring to read it over his shoulder. I rode with him for about four hours, and accompanied him to Gaza; he spoke with considerable bitterness of the Turks. He said, ‘Why have you turned out the Seraskier[60]?’ I said that the Turkish Government had, I believed, recalled him, because they were not satisfied with his conduct. He answered, ‘Oh! they are all alike; they smoke all day, and have people to wash their hands.’ I said, ‘The present Seraskier is a very good man and soldier.’ ‘Oh yes,’ he replied, ‘as long as he is in the saddle; as soon as he sits down he will rob like the rest’—on which he laughed very much. ‘I am the only man,’ he said, ‘to manage the Arabs and Bedouins, who never had any master before me. I could and did cut off their heads, which the Turks never will do. Lord Palmerston from London, and Lord Ponsonby from Constantinople, will have to come here to manage Syria.’ I said, that certainly they had done so much without coming to the country, that there was no knowing what they might effect, were they actually to do so. He did not look pleased. It appeared to me that he was either affecting high spirits, or that he had been drinking too much. He drank frequently from a bottle which hung in front of his saddle, and I was informed by an Egyptian Colonel of Artillery that it was filled with claret. He talked and laughed constantly with his servants. He is now suffering under a very bad attack of the jaundice, his eyes and head being quite yellow. “His reception at Gaza was remarkable: the people flocked from curiosity to see him, but his entry formed a singular contrast to that of the Turkish troops into the different towns and villages which they had occupied for the first time. In the latter case, the reception was enthusiastic, the men lining the roads and saluting us with all the varieties of an Eastern welcome, and the women crowding the house-tops and making with their tongues that extraordinary noise which is meant to denote extreme pleasure; but with Ibrahim Pacha there was a look of deep-rooted dislike on the faces of the people, which even their dread of him could not conceal. He, contrary to the Eastern fashion, saluted no one,—not one saluted him; certainly, as an inhabitant afterwards said to me, ‘Not a tongue nor a heart blessed him.’” Colonel Alderson had necessarily some intercourse with Ibrahim Pacha, and his character of that renowned personage is well worth quoting.