garden wall! You need not hesitate, therefore, about the identity of an ancient CHAPTER site, merely from the fact that the existing ruins do not correspond to the IX. demands of its history.

12th. We have had another charming walk through the gardens up to view from Neby Yahyeh, and certainly the prospect from the Neby is exceedingly Neby Yahyeh beautiful.

It is; but that from the high point two miles further south, called El Munterah, is much more striking and extensive. Take your stand on the ruins of the temple which once crowned that promontory, and gaze down on plain, sea, and city, six hundred feet below, and if you are not charmed, I shall despair of satisfying your fastidious taste. But we need not lavish all our admiration on Sidon's surroundings, lovely as they certainly are. Many other spots will challenge equal admiration.

and lemon trees.

It may be so; but can anything of the kind be more rich and ravishing Orange than those orange and lemon trees, loaded with golden fruit, single or in compact clusters, garnished with leaves of liveliest green, and spangled all over with snow - white flowers of sweetest fragrance? With a little distance to lend enchantment, Sidon's fair daughters gliding through these verdant bowers might pass for "ladies of the Hesperides," as Milton has it, set to watch these golden apples. Then those bananas, with their extraordinary leaves

a dozen feet long, and
drooping like great pen-
dent ears, strike my fancy
exceedingly. I cannot say
that I am yet reconciled
to the fruit. When green
it looks like our paw-paw
of Ohio, and when ripe has
a sickish-sweet taste, and
a doughy feel in the mouth.
Miss Bremer says she
thought she was biting into soap!

The ban

ana-ita fruit.

ᏢᎪᎡᎢ

1.

Fruits of

Sidon.

Yes; but she soon became extravagantly fond of them, and so will you. Did it ever occur to you to compare the list of modern fruits with those mentioned in the Bible? The result will probably surprise you. In numberless places the Bible. we read of grapes and figs, pomegranates, olives, dates, apples, and almonds, and these cover almost the entire list. But here, in Sidon, we have all these, and, in addition, oranges, lemons, citrons, pears, peaches, apricots, plums, quinces, bananas, prickly pears, and many smaller berries and fruits, none of which are once named in the Bible. The same superiority characterizes the Flowers of modern Flora. There is no allusion to our glorious oleanders, which adorn every water-course in the land. It is doubtful whether even the rose is mentioned. The word khubbāzleh, translated "rose" in the Song of Solomon1 and in Isaiah,2 is so like our Arabic name of the malva, khubbazy, as to suggest the inquiry whether a beautifully flowering variety of this plant was not the "rose" of the Hebrew poets. We have them very large, double, and richly variegated. Some are perennial, and grow into a prettily shaped bush. Again, there is no mention of pinks, or geraniums, or the clematis, the ivy, the honeysuckle, or of scores of other flowers which add so much to the beauty of the hedges, and forests, and fields of Palestine. What a pity that Solomon's botany is lost, in which "he spoke of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon, to the hyssop that springeth out of the wall!" 3 The cedar we know, but what is the hyssop of the royal botanist? Mr. B, French consul of this city, and an enthusiastic botanist, exhibited to me two varieties of hyssop; one, called z'atar by the Arabs, having the fragrance of thyme, with a hot, pungent taste, and long, slender stems. A bunch of these would answer very well for sprinkling the paschal and sacrificial blood on the lintel and posts of the doors,* and over the persons and houses cleansed from the leprosy. Mr. B—, however, thinks that a very small green plant, like a moss which covers old walls in damp places, is the hyssop of Solomon. This I doubt. The other kind also springs out of walls, those of the gardens especially, and was much more likely to attract the attention of the royal student.

Native

Visiting customs.

I begin to understand your "reunions," and have been highly enter reunions. tained by them. I am amused with that ceremonious politeness kept up between these intimate friends. When one enters the room, all rise to their feet, and stand steadfast and straight as a palm-tree to receive him. The formal salam is given and taken all round the room, with the dignity of a prince and the gravity of a court; and when the new-comer reaches his seat, the ceremony is repeated in precisely the same words. In one of your full divans, therefore, a man gives and receives about fifty salams before he is fairly settled and at his ease. Then comes the solemnity of coffee and smoking, with a great variety of apparatus. Some use the extemporaneous cigarette, obviously a modern innovation. Others have pipes with long stems of cherry or other wood, ornamented with amber mouth-pieces. The argeleh, however,

1 Song ii. 1.

2 Isa. xxxv. 1.

31 Kings iv. 33.

4 Exod. xii. 22.

with its flexible tube of various-coloured leather, seems to be the greatest CHAPTER tavourite. Some of these are very elegant. The tube of the one brought to

IX.

Pipes.

me the other evening was at least sixteen feet long, of bright green leather, corded with silver wire; the bottle, or kuzzazeh, as you call it, was very large, of thick cut glass, inlaid with gold, really rich and beautiful. I, however, could

produce no effect upon the water in the bottle. One needs a chest deep as a whale, and powers of suction like another maelstrom, to entice the smoke down the tube, through the water, and along the coiled sinuosities of the snake, or nabridj; and yet I saw a lady make the kuzzazeh bubble like a boiling caldron

PART

I.

without any apparent effort. The black coffee, in tiny cup, set in holders of china, brass, or silver filigree, I like well enough, but not this dreadful fumiga

tion. A cloud soon fills the room so dense that we can scarcely see each other, and I am driven to the open court to escape suffocation. Another thing which

Loud

FINJAN AND ZARF.

surprises me is the vehemence of the speakers. When fairly roused, all talk speaking. together at the top of their voices, and a great way above anything of the kind

I have ever heard. Noticing my surprise, one said to me, "You Americans talk as if you were afraid to be heard, and we as if we feared we should not be." Indeed, it is an incessant tempest of grating gutturals, which sets one's teeth on edge; and, in addition, head and shoulders, hands and feet, the whole

body, in fact, is wrought up into violent action to enforce the orator's meaning. CHAPTER I wonder how you comprehend a single sentence.

We are used to it; and, unless a stranger calls attention to that which has confounded you, we never notice it. I wish you could have understood the discussions, for they embraced some of those grand and solemn themes which can and ought to stir the deepest fountains of feeling in the human breast. The Arabs delight in such questions.

IX.

and West

ern man

My two young friends, who speak English, kept me aware of the leading topics as they came up; but it was a great annoyance not to be able to appreciate the remarks which so interested the company. We finally took a corner to ourselves, and fell into an extended comparison between Oriental and Western manners and customs. They maintained that we had invented and Eastern shaped ours on purpose to contradict theirs-theirs, the original; ours, copies reversed or caricatured. Of course, the weighty questions about beards, and ners moustaches, and shaved heads, were duly discussed, with respect to beauty, convenience, cleanliness, and health. Escaping from this tangle of the beard, we fell into another about long garments, and short, tight, and loose; and here they were confident of victory. Our clothes seem to them uncomfortable and immodest; and this is about the truth, if we must sit "asquat” on our heels, as the Orientals do; but with chairs and sofas, their objection has but little force, while for active life our fashion is far the best. Long, loose clothes are ever in the way, working, walking, or riding; and I suspect that they aid materially in producing that comparative inactivity which distinguishes Orientals from Occidentals. As to the mere matter of comeliness, we may admit their claim to some apparent superiority. The lords of the easel and the chisel with the sons of song in every age and country, have so decreed, and it is vain to resist.

costume.

These matters of dress and costume have a certain Biblical interest, and Dress and therefore form a necessary part of our study. The first garments were manufactured by God himself, and, in addition to their primary intention, had, as I believe, a typical significance. The skins with which the two first sinners, penitent and reconciled, were clothed, were those of the lambs offered in sacrifice, and not obscurely symbolized the robes of righteousness purchased for penitent believers by the sacrifice of the Lamb of God on Calvary. And in many subsequent incidents and institutions, garments are invested with a religious and typical signification. Such facts elevate the subject far above the category of mere trivialities. But, indeed, that cannot be a matter of indifference to the Christian student and philosopher in which all men, all women, all children, of every age and country, have, do, and will, to the end of time, feel a deep solicitude, and upon which is expended an infinite amount of time, money, and labour. It would be a curious exercise of ingenuity to trace out the very gradual development of human costume, from the first figleaves and coats of skins, to the complicated toilets of a highly-civilized society. We, however, must restrict ourselves to the Bible.