f Shehab.

The mountains around were still in careful cultivation, chiefly with the
vine and olive; and the aqueduct still brings water from the springs of
Suffar at several miles' distance, and this it is which, after supplying
the palace, forms the cascade above described, and afterwards turns two
mills.

At short distances are smaller palaces, erected also by this powerful
ameer for his mother and his married sons; but the same fate has
overtaken them all--Turkish devastation.

Before leaving the place, I visited the tomb of the ameer's mother and
that of his principal wife, who was a Christian; they are near the house,
and surrounded by five cypresses.

Took the road towards Mokhtarah, the seat of the rival chief, the Druse
Jonblat. For some distance after Beteddeen the roads have been carefully
constructed, over an unusually level plateau for the Lebanon; but an
enormous ridge of mountain stands conspicuous in the N.-E. This is the
highest part of the Shoof, near the sources of the river _Barook_, so
named from being the first place where the Arab camels _knelt_ on
arriving in the Lebanon in A.D. 821. The sad spectacle of villages and
good farm-houses desolate and blackened by fire, frequently met the view;
for this open tract, called the _Sumkaniyeh_, has frequently been a scene
of conflict between the leading factions; it was especially the ground of
the considerable battle of the Ameer Besheer and the Jonblatiyeh in 1825.
At length, from the commencement of a descent, we saw Mokhtarah upon an
opposite hill, commanding the view of our approach--a great advantage in
times of warfare. Our road lay downwards by odd turns and twists, and
over a precipice to the river Barook, with its romantic banks and
fruit-trees peering between overhanging rocks.

On our arrival, the great man, Said Bek Jonblat, {408} came out with a
train of 'Akal councillors and a crowd of humbler retainers. He was a
handsome man of about twenty-eight, and richly apparelled. Beneath a
large abai or cloak of black Cashmere, with Indian patterns embroidered
about the collar and skirts, he wore a long gombaz of very dark green
silk embossed with tambour work; his sash was of the plainest purple
silk, and his sidriyeh or vest was of entire cloth of gold with gold
filigree buttons: on the head a plain tarboosh, and in his hand sometimes
a cane ornamented with ivory or a rosary of sandal-wood. His gold watch
and chain were in the best Europ