hile
descending a range of the Lebanon, an extensive valley opened before
them, covered with oak trees, which clothed also, with their stout
trunks, their wide-spreading branches, and their rich starry foliage,
the opposite and undulating hills, one of which was crowned with a
convent. 'It is the only oak forest in Syria. It will serve some day to
build our fleet.'

At Gaza, which they had reached by easy journeys, for Fakredeen was very
considerate of the health of Tancred, whose wound had scarcely healed,
and over whom he watched with a delicate solicitude which would have
almost become a woman, the companions met Scheriff Effendi. The magic
signature of Lord Montacute settled the long-vexed question of the
five thousand muskets, and secured also ten thousand piastres for the
commander of the escort to deliver to his chief. The children of Rechab,
in convoy of the precious charge, certain cases of which were to be
delivered to the great Sheikh, and the rest to be deposited in indicated
quarters of the Lebanon, here took leave of the Emir and his friend,
and pursued their course to the north of Hebron and the Dead Sea, in the
direction of the Hauraan, where they counted, if not on overtaking
the great Sheikh, at least on the additional security which his
neighbourhood would ensure them. Their late companions remained at Gaza,
awaiting Tancred's yacht, which Baroni fetched from the neighbouring
Jaffa. A favourable breeze soon carried them from Gaza to Beiroot,
where they landed, and where Fakredeen had the political pleasure of
exhibiting his new and powerful ally, a prince, an English prince,
the brother perhaps of a queen, unquestionably the owner of a splendid
yacht, to the admiring eye of all his, at the same time, credulous and
rapacious creditors.

The air of the mountains invigorated Tancred. His eyes had rested so
long on the ocean and the desert, that the effect produced on the nerves
by the forms and colours of a more varied nature were alone reviving.

There are regions more lofty than the glaciered crests of Lebanon;
mountain scenery more sublime, perhaps even more beautiful: its peaks
are not lost in the clouds like the mysterious Ararat; its forests
are not as vast and strange as the towering Himalaya; it has not the
volcanic splendour of the glowing Andes; in lake and in cataract it
must yield to the European Alps; but for life, vigorous, varied, and
picturesque, there is no highland territory in the g