re beginning to acquire commercial
ambitions, and to desire peace.

The Hauran Druses are a vigorous, independent folk, with a well-deserved
reputation for courage, very astute, and hospitable to Europeans,
especially the British, with whom they have an old tradition of
friendship. But, like most persecuted but semi-independent peoples, they
are both cruel, and, by our standards, treacherous. They are a handsome
race, the women being often beautiful. The latter no longer carry the
head-horn which used to support the veil dropped over the face out of
doors. But their dress is still black with the exception of red
slippers, and the veil is never abandoned, not even, it is said, during
sleep. An English lady, who has been much among them, states that the
Druse women of the Hauran never unveiled before her. The men wear a
_tarbush_ with white roll, a black under-robe with white girdle, a short
loose jacket, and when necessary an _aba_ or parti-coloured cloak over
all. They go habitually armed with scimitar and half-moon axe, besides
gun or rifle.

Polygamy is forbidden. Marriage retains certain traces of the original
system of capture; but Druse women enjoy much consideration, and are
comparatively well educated, dignified and free in their bearing in
spite of their close veiling. As has been stated above, they join the
men in religious functions. Divorce is easy and can be initiated by the
woman; but remarriage of the pair can only be effected by the good
offices of a proxy (as in Moslem societies, after a third divorce).
Burial takes place in family mausoleums, walled up after each interment;
but Akils are buried in their own houses. The body is laid on its side,
with its face to the south (Mecca).

Education is widely spread, and there is a considerable religious
literature, much of which is known in Europe. A copy of the _Book of the
Testimonies to the Mysteries of the Unity_, consisting of seventy
treatises in four folio volumes, was found in the house of the chief
Akil at Bakhlin, and presented in 1700 to Louis XIV. by Nusralla ibn
Gilda, a Syrian doctor. Other manuscripts are to be found at Rome in the
Vatican, at Oxford in the Bodleian, at Vienna, at Leiden, at Upsala and
at Munich; and Dr J. L. Porter got possession of seven standard works of
Druse theology while at Damascus. The Munich collection was presented to
the king of Bavaria by Clot Bey, the chief physician in the Egyptian
army during its occupation of