Two hundred and fifty Bedouin were picked up dead on
the field, and others fell during the pursuit, though the Druses only lost two killed. As the Times correspondent remarks, ".we have thus a spectacle of a pitched battle between rival tribes within a day's marching of hotels and railway stations and army corps headquarters." The scene of the battle is close to Damascus. Little, however, would have been heard of the incident had it not happened that certain merchants of Damascus, who had come into the Bedouin camp to trade, were killed in the melee. Their fellow-religionists are now claim, rug blood-money, and until it is paid will boycott the Druses, and refuse to allow them to enter the city. It is doubtful whether the Turkish military authorities will have sufficient troops in Damascus to force peace upon the combatants, for the Syrian army has been depleted by the large drafts sent to the Yemen and Macedonia. If not, and if a serious state of war arises between the Mohammedans and the Drusee throughout the Hauran and the Lebanon, we shall have yet another complication added to the Turkish problem.
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