son appeared. He thanked Mrs. Burton warmly for her attentions,
said it was his duty to report that his mother was dead, and begged for
a little more of the efficacious white powder, as he had a bedridden
grandmother of whom he was also anxious to be relieved.

One piping hot morning [229] when walking in his garden Burton noticed
a gipsy tent outside, and on approaching it found two sun-burnt
Englishmen, a powerful, amiable-looking giant, and a smaller man with a
long beard and silky hair. The giant turned out to be Charles Tyrwhitt
Drake and the medium-sized man Edward Henry Palmer, both of whom
were engaged in survey work. Drake, aged 24, was the draughtsman and
naturalist; Palmer, [230] just upon 30, but already one of the first
linguists of the day, the archaeologist. Palmer, like Burton, had
leanings towards occultism; crystal gazing, philosopher's stone hunting.
After making a mess with chemicals, he would gaze intently at it, and
say excitedly: "I wonder what will happen"--an expression that was
always expected of him on such and all other exciting occasions. A
quadruple friendship ensued, and the Burtons, Drake and Palmer made
several archaeological expeditions together. To Palmer's poetical eyes
all the Lebanon region was enchanted ground. Here the lovely Shulamite
of the lovelier Scripture lyric fed her flocks by the shepherd's tents.
Hither came Solomon, first disguised as a shepherd, to win her love, and
afterwards in his royal litter perfumed with myrrh and frankincense to
take her to his Cedar House. This, too, was the country of Adonis.
In Lebanon the wild boar slew him, and yonder, flowing towards "holy
Byblus," were "the sacred waters where the women of the ancient
mysteries came to mingle their tears." [231] Of this primitive and
picturesque but wanton worship they were reminded frequently both by
relic and place name. To Palmer, viewing them in the light of the past,
the Cedars of Lebanon were a poem, but to Burton--a curious mixture of
the romantic and the prosaic--with his invariable habit of underrating
famous objects, they were "a wretched collection of scraggy Christmas
trees." "I thought," said Burton, "when I came here that Syria and
Palestine would be so worn out that my occupation as an explorer was
clean gone." He found, however, that such was not the case--all previous
travellers having kept to the beaten tracks; Jaydur, for example,
the classical Ituraea, was represented on the maps by "a