Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A History of the British and Foreign Bible Society, Vol. 5
Government, as we understand the word, was unknown. Such order as existed was enforced by punitive raids and ruthless massacres. Long oppression and injustice had bred a sullen fear and a restless distrust which destroyed all kindly intercourse. Outside the city walls travellers' tents were not safe at night without a guard of soldiers. Townsmen could not even name the villages they saw on the surrounding mountains; and the peasants who came down to market were so suspicious, that when asked whence they came, they refused to tell.
Strange to say, from the first Mr Mackintosh described the country as more accessible, the people as more friendly than he had expected. His Eastern training stood him in good stead; his confidence in a divine companionship - I am with you alway - stood him in better. He ?ung him self fearlessly into the excitable crowds of the large towns; explored with as little misgiving the wild and beautiful recesses of the Atlas, where each mountain was inhabited by a different tribe, and many of the Villages were eyried on such precipitous rocks that the little children were tethered to a tree or stake lest they Should fall over and be killed. Now he and his small company toiled along the sea-shore, where the loose sand scorched the feet, and the sun rained down fire and fever. Now it was a night of furious rain and the squalor and uproar Of a caravanserai packed with Arabs and negroes, mules, horses, camels, asses, cocks and hens. Perhaps they chanced to come to one of the Open-air souks or markets which are held in some neutral spot slopes and valleys were brilliant with masses Of Oleander, sheets of rose-coloured mallow-blossom and blue convolvulus, patches Of white, pink and yellow cistus the name Of the storks was legion; and the people streamed up from the straths and over the hills like worshippers to a Highland Communion.
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