modern English clothes, but the red fez on their heads designated
them as Turkish subjects. When we expressed an interest in their way of
living, the ladies took us from the reception room, which was furnished
in modern style, into their garden where orange and lemon trees and
semi-tropical plants were growing. They conducted us then through the
spacious marble-floored central hall, permitting us to look into nursery
and bedrooms fitted up partly in modern and partly in Oriental style,
and led us up a stone stairway to the level roof, which, with its
surrounding parapet, recalled the one described in "Ben Hur." Here fruit
was served by a Syrian maid clad in the native costume. On our return to
the lower floor, our hostesses conducted us to the divan salon or
Oriental smoking room. There, while we rested on low couches, the
Syrian maid passed around Turkish coffee in dainty cups, and then
brought a lighted narghileh from which, in turn, each one present took a
few whiffs of the mild Turkish tobacco.

[Illustration: VISITED THE OLDEST CITY IN THE WORLD.]

Mr. Sarkis told us that he had visited the United States at the time of
the Chicago Exposition. He took one hundred and forty Arabian horses to
the Exposition and had some interesting experiences while there. The
Rev. Mr. Zurub had spent sixteen months in America and spoke in the
highest terms of the kindness with which he had been received by the
American people.

In the evening a ball was given on the deck of the steamer, which had
been tastefully decorated for the occasion. Our friends, Mr. Sarkis,
Mrs. Sarkis and sister, the daughters, Fahima, aged about eighteen,
Neda, aged about fourteen, and a son, aged about sixteen, together with
Mr. Sabra, came on board to visit the ship. Mr. Sabra sang some Arabic
songs and Fahima joined him in a duet.

About fifty tourists left the Moltke at Beyrout in order to take the
side trip of three days to Damascus, the oldest city in history, and to
the ruins of the great Temple of Baal at Baalbek. A narrow-gauge railway
extends across the Lebanon Mountains from Beyrout to Damascus. The
distance is but ninety miles, but as the train has to rise to an
elevation of nearly five thousand feet and then descend to the valley
beyond, the average speed does not exceed ten or twelve miles an hour.
On Wednesday morning the steamer stopped at the little seaport of Haifa
just long enough to send ashore sixty passengers. Some of these wished