y part of Syria. She halted in succession at
Jerusalem, Damascus, Aleppo, Baulbek, and Palmyra--everywhere
maintaining an almost regal state--and by the stateliness of her
demeanour and the splendour of her pretensions producing a powerful
impression on the wandering Arab tribes, who proclaimed her Queen of
Palmyra and paid her an enthusiastic homage.

After several years of migratory enterprise, during which her
pretensions gradually grew bolder and stronger as her own faith in them
increased, she at length fixed her abode in an almost inaccessible
solitude of the wild Lebanon, near Said--the ancient Sidon--a concession
of the ruined convent and village of Djoun, a settlement of the Druses,
having been granted by the Pastor of St. Jean d'Acre. There she erected
her tent. The convent was a broad, grey mass of irregular building,
which, from its position, as well as from the gloomy blankness of its
walls, gave the idea of a neglected fortress; it had, in fact, been a
convent of great size, and like most of the religious houses in this
part of the world, had been made strong enough for opposing an inert
resistance to any mere casual band of assailants who might be unprovided
with regular means of attack. This she filled with a large retinue of
dragomen, women, slaves, and Albanian guards. She lived like an
independent princess, with a court of her own, a territory of her own,
and it must be added, laws of her own; carrying on political relations
with the Porte, with Beschir the celebrated Emir of the Lebanon, and the
numerous sheikhs of the Syrian deserts. Over these sheikhs and these
tribes she exercised at one time a singular influence. Mr. Kinglake
reports that her connection with the Bedawun began by her making a large
present of money (L500, an immense sum in piastres) to the chief whose
authority was recognized between Damascus and Palmyra. "The prestige,"
he says, "created by the rumours of her high and undefined rank, as well
as of her wealth and corresponding magnificence, was well sustained by
her imperious character and dauntless bravery."

Lady Hester, in conversation with the European visitors, would
occasionally mention some of the circumstances that assisted her to
secure an influence amounting almost to sovereignty.

"The Bedawun, so often engaged in irregular warfare, strains his eyes to
the horizon in search of a coming enemy just as habitually as the sailor
keeps his 'bright look out' for a strange sa