nt controversialist residing in Damascus, and practising
medicine as learned from the Americans. The one who was shot by the
Druses was Andrew; the eldest of all is Ibrahim, settled in Bayroot, and
his son named Khaleel is dragoman of the English consulate there--it was
he who furnished us with the introduction to this house in Dair el Kamar.

How curious is the domestic life of these Oriental families. Eating
takes place in the principal room, with a throng of women and children
passing heedlessly about, or visitors entering as they please. Among
these, during the dinner time, came in a Jew speaking Jewish-German. He
was a dyer, who had known me at Jerusalem, and conversed with remarkable
self-possession: it seemed as if the mountain air, and absence from the
Rabbis of Jerusalem, had made a man of him. In attendance on the meal
was an ancient woman-servant of the family, very wrinkled, but wearing
the tantoor or horn on her head.

On retiring from the table, if we may use that expression as applicable
to an Oriental dinner, there came in the Greek Catholic Bishop of Saida,
and several heads of houses of the Maronites, on visits of ceremony.

The fatigue of the day was closed, and rewarded by a night of sleep upon
a bed of down and crimson silk, under a covering of the same.

In the morning our journey was resumed; but before quitting this
interesting town, I cannot forbear quoting Dr Porter's admirable
description of Dair el Kamar, from Murray's "Handbook for Syria and
Palestine," part ii. page 413:--

"Deir el Kamr is a picturesque mountain village, or rather town, of some
8000 inhabitants, whose houses are built along a steep, rocky hill-side.
A sublime glen runs beneath it, and on the opposite side, on a projecting
ledge, stands the palace of Bteddin. Both the banks, as well as the
slopes above them, are covered with terraces, supporting soil on which a
well-earned harvest waves in early summer, amid rows of mulberries and
olives and straggling vines. Industry has here triumphed over apparent
impossibilities, having converted naked rocky declivities into a
paradise. In Palestine we have passed through vast plains of the richest
soil all waste and desolate--here we see the mountain's rugged side
clothed with soil not its own, and watered by a thousand rills led
captive from fountains far away. Every spot on which a handful of soil
can rest, every cranny to which a vine can cling, every ledge on which a
m