ean taste.

I need not here expatiate on the sumptuous reception afforded us; it may
be enough to say, that having some hours to spare before sunset--the
universal time for dinner in the East--we walked about, and the Bek
shewed me the yet unrepaired damages, inflicted in his father's time, at
the hands of the victorious Ameer Besheer's faction, on that palace and
paradise which his father Besheer had created there, thus teaching the
Shehab Ameer how to build its rival of Beteddeen,--and the limpid stream
brought from the high sources of the Barook to supply cascades and
fountains for the marble courts, which the other also imitated in
bringing down the Suffar to his place. We sat beside those streams and
cascades, so grateful at that season of the year, conversing about the
Arab factions of Kaisi and Yemeni, or the Jonblat and Yesbeck parties of
the Druses, or his own early years spent in exile either in the Hauran or
with Mohammed 'Ali in Egypt,--but not a word about actual circumstances
of the Lebanon, or about his plans for restoring the palace to more than
its former splendour, which he afterwards carried out. This was all very
agreeable, but a curious fit of policy assumed at the time rendered my
host to some degree apparently inhospitable to us Christians.

It is well known that the Druse religion allows its votaries to profess
outwardly the forms of any other religion according to place and
circumstances. The Bek was now adopting Moslem observances;
consequently, it being the month of Ramadan, we could have nothing to eat
till after sunset. What could have been his reason for this temporary
disguisement I have never been able to discover. Even the adan was cried
on the roof of his house, summoning people to prayer in the canonical
formula of the Moslems, and Said Bek, with his councillors, retired to a
shed for devotional exercises, as their prayers may be appropriately
termed; and I remarked that at every rising attitude he was lifted
reverently by the hands and elbows, by his attendants,--an assistance
which no true Mohammedan of any rank, that I had ever met with, would
have tolerated.

At length the sunlight ceased to gild the lofty peaks above us, and
pipes, sherbet, and ice were served up as a preparation for the coming
dinner.

There is in front of the house a square reservoir of water, with a
current flowing in and out of it; this is bordered by large
cypress-trees, and in a corner near the hous