oman is no longer so generally regarded as worthy of
contempt and abuse, and the progress being made in the emancipation and
elevation of woman, is one of the noblest and best proofs of the real
progress of Lebanon in the paths of morality and civilization."

This is the language of the official paper of the Lebanon government.
Yet how difficult to root out superstitious and injurious customs by
official utterances! At the very time that article was written, these
customs continued in full force. A woman in Abeih, whose husband died in
1866, refused to allow her house or her clothes to be washed for more
than a whole year afterward, just as though untidiness and personal
uncleanliness would honor her deceased husband!

CHAPTER XIV.

BEDAWIN ARABS.

There is one class of the Arab race, of which little or nothing has been
said in the preceding pages, for the simple reason that there is little
to be said of missionary work or progress among them. We refer to the
Bedawin Arabs. The true sons of Ishmael, boasting of their descent from
him, living a wild, free and independent life, rough, untutored and
warlike, plundering, robbing and murdering one another as a business;
roaming over the vast plains which extend from Aleppo to Baghdad, and
from Baghdad to Central Arabia, and bordering the outskirts of the more
settled parts of Syria and Palestine; ignorant of reading and writing,
and yet transacting extensive business in wool and live-stock with the
border towns and cities; nominally Mohammedans, and yet disobeying every
precept of Moslem faith and practice; subjects of the Ottoman Sultan,
and yet living in perpetual rebellion or coaxed by heavy bribes into
nominal submission; suffering untold hardships from their life of
constant exposure to winter storms and summer heats; without proper
food, clothing or shelter, and utterly destitute of medical aid and
relief, and yet despising the refinements of civilized life, and
regarding with contempt the man who will sleep under a roof; they
constitute a most ancient, attractive class of men, interesting to every
lover of his race, and especially to the Missionary of the Cross.

European missionaries can do little among them. To say nothing of the
rough, nomadic, unsettled and perilous life they lead, any European
would find himself so much an object of curiosity and suspicion among
them, and the peculiar Bedawin pronunciation of the Arabic so different
from the correct