strance, and this, as will always be the case, when urged with a due degree of firmness and temper, had a very sensible effect in restraining the Dola's injustice.
This uncertain state of affairs continued till September, when they were brought to a crisis by a strange concurrence of events, which in their progress strongly mark the anxious desire to avoid the shedding of blood, which characterises the natives of Yemen, except in those instances where personal resentment is concerned.
On September the 7th, the Vizier's brother, after several vain attempts to prevail upon the Dola to desist from measures hostile to the government, seized the opportunity, as he was taking refreshments in the evening, to give into the Dola's hands an order from the government to deliver up the command of Mocha to Syed Guderat, the Emir Muckatah, or commander of the troops. This dangerous commission was no sooner executed than he hastily withdrew; and as soon as the Dola saw the contents of the order, he called aloud to his soldiers to pursue the fugitive; but before they could overtake him he had, fortunately for himself, reached the Emir's house.
This officer on the following day went to the Dola, attended by an adequate guard, and officially required him to deliver up his charge. This the Dola still declined; and a reference was then made to the troops, to ascertain whose authority they would recognise; on this the old Mocha troops declared their acquiescence in the order from Sana, and in consequence delivered up the gates: the mercenary troops from Aden still remained attached to the Dola.
On the same day an attack was made by the latter on the Emir's house, to which it was proposed to set fire, but on the approach of the party, and on one of the soldiers being wounded, the intention was abandoned. Soon afterwards, an assembly of the principal men in the town took place, and with some difficulty a suspension of hostilities was agreed upon, till reference could again be made to Sana; and a tom-tom was sent round the town to promulgate this satisfactory intelligence among the inhabitants.
Though it may readily be conceived that so precarious a state of affairs rendered a residence at Mocha very un-
