d, he is genuine, and oft-times amusingly
truthful. But the many questionable pages on this curious subject of
the eremite, what are we to do with them? If they are imaginary, there
is too much in this Book against quackery to daunt us. And yet, if
Khalid has found the troglodyte, whom we thought to be an extinct
species, he should have left us a few legends about it.

We have visited the ancient caverns of the Lebanon troglodytes in the
cliffs overhanging the river of Wadi Kadeesha, and found nothing there
but blind bats, and mosses, and dreary vacuity. No, not a vestage of
the fossil is there, not a skull, not a shinbone. We have also
inquired in the monasteries near the Cedars, and we were frankly told
that no monk to-day fancies such a life. And if he did, he would not
give his brother monks the trouble of carrying his daily bread to a
cave in those forbidden cliffs. And yet, Simeon Stylites, he of the
Pillar, who remained for thirty years perched on the top of it, was a
Syrian shepherd. But who of his descendants to-day would as much as
pass one night on the top of that pillar? Curious eleemosynary phases
of our monkish system, these modern times reveal.

On our way from a journey to the Cedars, while engaged in the present
Work, we passed through a pine forest, in which were some tangled
bushes of the clematis. The muleteer stops near one of these and
stoops to reach something he had seen therein. No treasure-trove,
alas, as he supposed; but merely a book for which he lacerated his
hands and which he cursed and handed to us, saying, "This must be the
breviary of some monk."

No, it was an English book, and of American origin, and of a kind
quite rare in America. Indeed, here were a find and surprise as
agreeable as Khalid's sweetbrier bush. Henry Thoreau's _Week_! What a
miracle of chance. Whose this mutilated copy of the _Week_, we
thought? Who in these mountains, having been in America, took more
interest in the Dreamer of Walden Woods than in peddling and trading?
We walk our mule, looking about in vague, restless surprise, as if
seeking in the woods a lost companion, and lo, we reach a monarch pine
on which is carved the name of--Khalid! This book, then, must be his;
the name on the pine tree is surely his own; we know his hand as well
as his turn of mind. But who can say if this be his Kaaba, this his
pine-mosque? Might he not only have passed through these glades to
other parts? Signs, indeed, are here of