Eastern life there is a power of resistance,
as everybody knows who tries to change it, which may yet defeat the
hosts of joyless drudgery.

My Syrian friend--the Suleyman of the following sketches--introduced
me to the only Europeans who espoused that life--a French Alsatian
family, the Baldenspergers, renowned as pioneers of scientific
bee-keeping in Palestine, who hospitably took a share in my
initiation. They had innumerable hives in different parts of the
country--I have seen them near the Jaffa gardens and among the
mountains south of Hebron--which they transported in due season, on
the backs of camels, seeking a new growth of flowers. For a long while
the Government ignored their industry, until the rumour grew that it
was very profitable. Then a high tax was imposed. The Baldenspergers
would not pay it. They said the Government might take the hives if it
desired to do so. Soldiers were sent to carry out the seizure. But the
bee-keepers had taken out the bottom of each hive, and when the
soldiers lifted them, out swarmed the angry bees. The soldiers fled;
and after that experience the Government agreed to compromise. I
remember well a long day's ride with Emile and Samuel Baldensperger,
round by Askelon and Ekron, and the luncheon which a village headman
had prepared for us, consisting of a whole sheep, roast and stuffed
with nuts and vegetables; and a day with Henri Baldensperger in the
Hebron region. The friendships of those days were made for life.
Hanauer, the Baldenspergers, Suleyman, and other natives of the
country--those of them who are alive--remain my friends to-day.

In short, I ran completely wild for months, in a manner unbecoming to
an Englishman; and when at length, upon a pressing invitation, I
turned up in Jerusalem and used my introductions, it was in
semi-native garb and with a love for Arabs which, I was made to
understand, was hardly decent. My native friends were objects of
suspicion. I was told that they were undesirable, and, when I stood up
for them, was soon put down by the retort that I was very young. I
could not obviously claim as much experience as my mature advisers,
whose frequent warnings to me to distrust the people of the country
thus acquired the force of moral precepts, which it is the secret joy
of youth to disobey.

That is the reason why the respectable English residents in Syria
figure in these pages as censorious and hostile, with but few
exceptions. They were hostil