Islam was very fine, very clean, and
Campbell believed in resignation, and acknowledged there was no god but
God, as the crypticism was, yet the Scots-Irish honesty of him would not
accept Mohammed as the prophet of God. It would be like putting
Bonaparte above the Lord Buddha. A faith is a very solemn thing and not
to be approached lightly. To accept a faith publicly, the tongue in the
cheek, was the sin of insincerity and rank dishonesty, having committed
which no man should hold up his head. And moreover Moslem women were
queer things. For centuries they had been held to be a little more
beautiful than a flower, a little less valuable, less personal than a
fine horse. Being told that for centuries, they had come to believe it,
and believing one's self to be particular leads one to become it. Moslem
women, no!

He had become familiar with the Druses around Beirut. There was
something in the hard independent tribesmen that reminded him of the
Ulster Scot. Aloof, unafraid, inimical, independent, with a strain of
mysticism in them, they were somehow like the glensmen of Antrim. Fairly
friendly with the Moslems, contemptuous of the Latin Christians,
impatient of dogma, they might have been the Orangemen of Syria. Their
emirs had a great dignity and a great simplicity, like an old-time
Highland chief. They acknowledged God, but after that their faith ran
into esoteric subtleties of nature-worship, which they kept to the
initiates among themselves.... And the common run of them had strange
legends, as that in a mountain bowl of China lived tribe on tribe of
Druses, and that one day these of Syria and of China would be reunited
and conquer the world.... They were very dignified men, and muscular....
Their women had the light feet of gazelles ... One only saw their sweet
low foreheads, their cinnamon hands.... They claimed they were
Christians sometimes, and other times they said they were Moslems, but
the truth no stranger knew.... A secret sect, like the ancient
Assassins, who had the Old Man of the Mountain for their king.... With
them dwelt beauty and terror and the glamour of hidden things....

To Shane they were very kindly. They recognized him for a mountain man
born, and for an honest man. They could not understand him, as a
Christian, seeing he took no part in Greek or Latin politics. They
decided he must have some faith of his own.... He did them some kindness
of errands, and they were very hospitable to him....