years a pensioner on her
bounty. The grave is covered with this simple stone monument, of a
pattern very common in the country.

[Picture: Tomb of Lady Hester Stanhope]

At the distance of a few yards is the monument over a former Moslem
proprietor of the house.

Lady Hester died in June 1839, lonely and miserable, and so ended her
wild dreams and fancied importance. During her long residence there she
had meddled in local dissensions, patronising the Jonblats of Mokhtarah
against the Ameer Besheer and the Egyptian invaders; she kept spies in
the principal towns, as Acre and Saida, and had even supplied ammunition
to the citadel of Acre for the Turks, but did not live to see the
Egyptians ousted from the country.

There was good deal of exaggeration afloat at the time respecting her and
some of her habits of life, though scarcely more extraordinary than the
reality of other matters, as we are now able to judge of them; but at
that period Syria and the Lebanon were very little understood in Europe,
_i.e._, from 1823 to 1839. She was not so utterly removed from human
society as is often supposed. She was not perched like an eagle on an
inaccessible mountain, for there are villages near, besides the great
Convent of Mokhallis, and she had constant communication with Saida for
money and provisions.

The view around is indeed stern and cheerless in character, devoid of
romantic accessories, without the rippling streams, the pines or the
poplars of either Mokhtarah or Beteddeen; her hill like its neighbours
was a lump of stone, with some scanty cultivation in the valley below,
very little of this, and her small garden attached to the dwelling.

Before leaving this subject, I may as well state with respect to the
common belief of Lady Hester being crowned Queen of Palmyra by the desert
Arabs, that from information which I consider reliable this is all a
mistake, or as it was expressed to me, a "French enthusiasm," the truth
being that in consequence of her lavish largesses among the wild people,
they expressed their joy by acclamations in which they compared her to
the "Queen of Sheba" who had come among them; and then by her flatterers,
or those who were unskilled in the language, the term "Melekeh" (Queen)
was interpreted as above: and as for a coronation the Arab tribes have no
such a custom; the greatest chiefs, nay, even the kings of the settled
Arabs, such as Mohammed and his successors, have n