HORRIBLE OUTRAGE NEAR JERUSALEM.

Lyttelton Times, Volume X, Issue 605, 21 August 1858, Page 3

HORRIBLE OUTRAGE NEAR JERUSALEM.

A private letter from Jerusalem gives the details of an outrage at Jaffa, of which, though you may possibly have received news of it before this reaches you, it may still be worth while to give your readers an accurate version, especially as the facts, though shocking, are few. For. three or four years past, an American family named Dickson, has occupied a farm some coxiple of miles from Jaffa/nn the rich, valley that lies between the sea and the base of the hilly plateau on which stands Jerusalem—

The family consisted of the father, mother, arid two daughters, one of the latter of whom—a young' woman of £ve-and-twenty—was mairied to a Prussian, named Steinbach, and with her husband and two infants, lived in her father's house. On the night of the 12th of last month, a party of five men—three of them completely disguised, and two partly so, but all evidently Arab residents of the neigh-bourhood—-approached the house, and commenced a noisy disturbance outside, claiming-a cow, which they alleged wasconcealed within.

Mr. Steinbach went out to remonstrate, and after a short parley was shot dead. The ruffians then broke into the house, seized Mrs. Steinbach, drag-ged her outside, and there, by the side of her husband's dead body, violated her, one after the other, with more than sepoy cruelty. That done, they again entered the house, and treated old Mrs. Dickson, the mother, similarly, and after her, her youngest, daughter, who is only twelve years of age. This series of brutalities perpetrated, the villains beat the old man till seemingly dead, then robbed the house and decamped. As may be supposed, these atrocities occasioned an intense excitement amongst the inhabitants of Jaffa, where the Dicksons are well known and deservedly respected. On the news reaching Jerusalem, the American consul—who, by the way is a very worthless native—hastened to the scene of the outrage, and in conjunction with the Turkish authorities, endeavoured to trace the offenders, but in vain. A full report of the whole affair has, however, been laid before the Porte by Mr. Brown, the American Consul and Charge d'Affaires, here, and a promise of full and satisfactory punishment has been at once given by thel Government. Since the tragedy of Marasch, near Aleppo, when our "own Land Transport Agent and his family were- | bodily burnt alive by a mob of fanatics, no such atrocity has occurred anywhere in Syria, celebrated a-* that -province is for such occasional outbursts of religious and party violence. The-motive tor this particular outrage is said to have been private vengeance; but. be this-as it may, thews is no doubt, that punishment, adequate to trio offenco—if any can be so, —will be. visited on the inhuman wrotehos by whom the horror has been committed.