insignificant skirmish blazoned forth as an important victory. A person who was at that time with the Pasha at Mezerib has assured me, that the corps of Arabs which attacked the castle consisted of about 800 men, mounted upon camels and armed with lances. Saoud, it was said, had fixed his head-quarters, with the great body of his army, at about two days journey from Damascus, amongst the encampments of a Wahabi tribe called Shammar. The Pasha of Acre was now required to send troops in aid of Yussef Pasha; the Emir Beshir, or chief of the Druses, was addressed to the same effect, and Yussef Pasha remained from the 9th of July till the 26th at Mezerib without so much as seeing an enemy; but he had the mortification to hear that Saoud’s vanguard had plundered and entirely destroyed seventeen of the best villages of the Haouran, and massacred all the inhabitants. Soleiman Pasha of Acre had meanwhile encamped with about three thousand men at Tabaria, and the Emir Beshir had joined him there with as many more Druses. The town of Damascus was in perfect tranquillity, the fear of the Wahabis having already subsided, when on the 25th a civil officer came to town with a letter from Soleiman Pasha, addressed to the Kadi, Ulemas, and Grandees of Damascus, including the copy of a Firman from the Porte, by which Yussef Pasha was deposed, and Soleiman Pasha named Pasha of Damascus. Soleiman had obtained his Firman by transmitting considerable sums of money to Constantinople, by promising to conduct the Hadj, or in case it should be absolutely impossible, to remit the Miri, and at all events to send Yussef’s accumulated treasures to the Grand Signor. Nothing was done in his favour at Damascus but to deposit, as usual, a copy of the Firman in the registers of the Mehkemeh, or court of justice. Yussef Pasha, by forced marches, arrived three days after with his army, and ordered several heads to be struck off. Soleiman Pasha with the Emir Beshir likewise advanced, and the town was in expectation of some great event. Luckily for its inhabitants Yussef Pasha’s avarice prevented a civil war; instead of liberally distributing his treasures amongst his troops, he only paid them a part of their arrears, upon which the emissaries of Soleiman fomented the dissatisfaction which began to break out, the principal officers were bought over, and in a little skirmish that happened on the 31st, the troops of Yussef loudly expressed their disinclination to fight their master’s rival. By the sacrifice of his treasures Yussef Pasha might perhaps have been able to sustain his cause. Being informed that Soleiman was in possession of a second Firman which demanded his head, he determined suddenly to fly. He was preparing to leave his Seraglio in the night of the 1st of August, accompanied by about eight-hundred chosen horsemen, with his treasure loaded upon seventy mules, when his Arnauts, who were to have been left behind, fell upon the loaded mules,