of forty pounds would put in excellent
repair, but which is now fast falling to pieces,
and may every winter be expected to become
impassable, we reached the sands of the sea-
shore, and our way was over these for the
next mile or so. On arriving at the Nahr-el-
Maut, or River of Death—so called from the
sickliness of the small bit of land about its
mouth—we turned to the left, and at once
began to climb up Lebanon. The road we
used leads to the village of Brumana, the
seat of government of this (the Christian)
part of the mountain, and it has been
iu some places repaired and kept in order.
It is very steep—so steep that the rider has
often to cling to his horse's mane if he would
not slip over its tail—and in many parts
it passes, for perhaps a couple of hundred
yards, over smooth, slippery tracts of naked
rock. "Where that is not the case, the horses
tread over large loose stones, five or six deep.
Sometimes the pathway is hardly more than
a foot broad, with a steep wall of rock on
one side, and a precipice hundreds of feet
deep on the other. Yet this is one of
the best roads in Lebanon, and is looked
upon by the mountaineers as a specimen of
engineering science in which they are entitled
proudly to rejoice. The road is good enough,
for such is the activity of Syrian horses
that an accident seldom or never occurs.
The horses inspire an implicit confidence. I
confess that on my first arrival in Syria I
thought that I should never have the nerve
to ride over these roads; but, at the end of a
month, and after my first three or four trips
in the mountain, I dreaded them no more
than I should dread an English lane.

Our way being steep from the seaboard,
we soon began to feel a change of climate,
and to enjoy the breeze of Lebanon. This is
one of the great comforts of Beyrout.
However hot it may be in the town, a couple of
hours' ride brings you to a climate which
is like the spring weather of Naples. In a
large room of my house in Beyrout the
thermometer had stood at ninety-five yesterday
afternoon; we stopped to rest when we were
three-parts of the way up the first range of
the mountain, and there we were just twenty
degrees cooler.

The view was magnificent. The city of
Beyrout, with its extensive suburbs and
its many mulberry orchards, lay like a
large map before us, and with the glass
almost each individual house could be
distinguished. . At our feet was the blue
Mediterranean, whilst nearer, down the
mountain sides—wherever there was enough
soil to be found—the land had been reclaimed,
and the narrow terraces rising, for hundreds
of feet, one above the other, were green with
the leaves of the mulberry and fig. A mile
further up, the village of Brumana,
containing the castle of the kaimakan, or
governor of the Christian part of Lebanon,
was visible on our right, whilst nearly
everywhere within range of the eye, villages
and convents seemed to crowd the habitable
places. Colonel Churchill, who has written
what I believe to be the only good account
of the interior of Lebanon, compares all
Lebanon to a huge limestone quarry, its
heights covered with rough blocks; the abundant
stone, made fertile by man's labour,
breeds villages of which the stone houses are
based on rock. Hamlets and fig-gardens,
which seem so to overhang the abyss that at
a child's touch they would slide down, hold
firm against the storms of winter; for, so
scanty is the soil that, everywhere, man bites
his hold into the rock itself.

Leaving the village of Brumana on our
left, we gained the table land at the top of
the first ridge of Lebanon, and enjoyed for
two or three miles the novelty of a road nearly
flat. Half an hour more sufficed to bring us
within sight of the convent of Mar Shyia,
where we meant to breakfast, and to rest
during the hot part of the day. It stood
about four hundred feet above the road on
which we travelled, on a round hill, so covered
with the low dwarf oak, that, as we mounted,
one of us ten yards in advance was invisible,
horse and all, to those who followed him.
On the top, we found a platform of land,
about three hundred yards long by a hundred
wide, upon which two convents—one of
Maronite, one of Greek Catholic monks—and;
two churches are built. Though perfectly
unexpected, we were welcomed by the superior
and the monks of the Greek Catholic convent,
almost before we had time to dismount from
our horses, and were at once shown into th&
receiving room. Sherbet, coffee and pipes
were served to myself and my interpreter, a
bedroom was made ready, the mid-day meal
—apart from that of the monks—was
prepared, my three horses were put up and fed,
my servant was cared for, and I was pressed
to stay not for an hour or a day, but for a
week or a fortnight. All this being pure
hospitality. It is true that the food and
lodging offered at these convents are not
such as Europeans are accustomed to; but it
is the best the poor monks have to give, and
it is given by them as if they and not their
guests were the men who had thanks to pay.
This convent belongs to the Alpine order of
Greek Catholic monks, and at the time of our
arrival the Superior General of the order
happened to be there; for he was on a tour of
visitation. So jolly an old gentleman I have
not often met. He had been sixty years a
monk, confessed to eighty years of age, and
had dwelt more than fifty years upon Lebanon
in one or other of the convents of his order.
After we had taken sherbet and coffee, and
had smoked a couple of pipes each, I was shown
into a small room to which my saddle-bags
had already been taken. Who can describe
the pleasure of that first sleep in a cool
climate, after weeks of grilling in the living
furnace of the plains? Although, it was only