for some miles through mulberry gardens, and over a dangerous
rocky pass, where Antiochus the Great defeated the Egyptians, in 218
B.C. This pass would have required the best exertions and courage of a
European horse, yet a file of camels was ascending it with the same
patient look that they wear in their native deserts. Though forced
frequently to traverse mountains in a country whose commerce is
conducted by their means, these animals are only at their ease upon the
sandy plain. The Arabs say, that if you were to ask a camel which he
preferred--travelling up or down hill, his answer would be, "May the
curse of Allah light on both!"

The road was only a steep and rocky path, which, in England, a goat
would be considered active if he could traverse. Our horses,
nevertheless, went along it at a canter, though the precipice sometimes
yawned beneath our outside stirrup, while the inner one knocked fire out
of the rocky cliff. Rocks, tumbled from the mountain, lay strewn about
and nearly choked up the narrow river bed; over these we scrambled,
climbed, and leaped in a manner that only Arab horses would attempt or
could accomplish.

It was late when we came in sight of two conical hills, on one of which
stands the village of Djouni, on the other a circular wall over which
dark trees were waving, and this was the place in which Lady Hester
Stanhope had finished her strange and eventful career. It had been
formerly a convent, but the Pasha of Acre had given it to the "Prophet
Lady," and she had converted its naked walls into palaces, its
wilderness into gardens. The sun was setting as we entered the
enclosure. The buildings that constituted the palace were of a very
scattered and complicated description, covering a wide space, but only
one storey in height; courts and gardens, stables and sleeping-rooms,
halls of audience and ladies' bowers, were strangely intermingled.

Here fountains once played in marble basins, and choice flowers bloomed;
but now it presented a scene of melancholy desolation. Our dinner was
spread on the floor in Lady Hester's favourite apartment; her deathbed
was our sideboard, her furniture our fuel; her name our conversation.
Lady Hester Stanhope was niece to Mr. Pitt, and seems to have possessed
or acquired something of his indomitable energy and proud self-reliance
during the time that she presided over his household. Soon after his
death she left England. For some time she was at Constantinople, w