last century are abundant, and I recollect a tablet inscribed: "Souard,
1670," around which the newer wood has grown to the height of three or
four inches. The seclusion of the grove, shut in by peaks of barren snow,
is complete. Only the voice of the nightingale, singing here by daylight
in the solemn shadows, breaks the silence. The Maronite monk, who has
charge of a little stone chapel standing in the midst, moves about like a
shade, and, not before you are ready to leave, brings his book for you to
register your name therein, I was surprised to find how few of the crowd
that annually overrun Syria reach the Cedars, which, after Baalbec, are
the finest remains of antiquity in the whole country.

After a stay of three hours, we rode on to Eden, whither our men had
already gone with the baggage. Our road led along the brink of a
tremendous gorge, a thousand feet deep, the bottom of which was only
accessible here and there by hazardous foot-paths. On either side, a long
shelf of cultivated land sloped down to the top, and the mountain streams,
after watering a multitude of orchards and grain-fields, tumbled over the
cliffs in long, sparkling cascades, to join the roaring flood below. This
is the Christian region of Lebanon, inhabited almost wholly by Maronites,
who still retain a portion of their former independence, and are the most
thrifty, industrious, honest, and happy people in Syria. Their villages
are not concrete masses of picturesque filth, as are those of the Moslems,
but are loosely scattered among orchards of mulberry, poplar, and vine,
washed by fresh rills, and have an air of comparative neatness and
comfort. Each has its two or three chapels, with their little belfries,
which toll the hours of prayer. Sad and poetic as is the call from the
minaret, it never touched me as when I heard the sweet tongues of those
Christian bells, chiming vespers far and near on the sides of Lebanon.

Eden merits its name. It is a mountain paradise, inhabited by people so
kind and simple-hearted, that assuredly no vengeful angel will ever drive
them out with his flaming sword. It hangs above the gorge, which is here
nearly two thousand feet deep, and overlooks a grand wilderness of
mountain-piles, crowded on and over each other, from the sea that gleams
below, to the topmost heights that keep off the morning sun. The houses
are all built of hewn stone, and grouped in clusters under the shade of
large walnut-trees. In walking a