loping heath are the orchards and palms
of Amsheet. Further below is Jbail, or ancient Byblus, looking like a
clutter of cliffs on the shore. Farewell to the mountain heights, and
the arid wilderness! Welcome the fertile plains, and hopeful strands.
In half an hour I reach the immense building--the first or the last of
the village, according to your direction--which, from the top of the
hill, I thought to be a fortress. A huge structure this, still
a-building, and of an architecture altogether different from the
conventional Lebanon type. No plain square affair, with three pointed
arches in the facade, and a gable of pink tiles; but here are quoins,
oriels, embrasures, segmental arches, and other luxuries of
architecture. Out of place in these wilds, altogether out of place.
Hard by are two primitive flat-roofed beits, standing grimly there as
a rebuke to the extravagant tendencies of the age. I go there in the
hope of buying some cheese and eggs, and behold a lady of severe
beauty smoking a narghilah and giving orders to a servant. She returns
my salaam seated in her chair, and tells me in an injured air, after I
had made known to her my desire, that eggs and cheese are sold in the
stores.

"'You may come in for breakfast,' she adds; and clapping for the
servant, orders him to lay the table for me. I enter the beit, which
is partitioned into a kitchen, a dining-room, and a parlour. On the
table is spread the usual breakfast of a Lebanonese of affluence:
namely, cheese, honey, fig-jam, and green olives. The servant, who is
curious to know my name, my religion, my destination, and so forth,
tells me afterwards that Madame is the wife of the kaiemkam, and the
castle, which is building, is their new home.

"Coming out, I thank Madame, and ask her about the grave of Renan's
sister. She pauses amazed, blows her narghilah smoke in my face,
surveys me from top to toe, and puts to me those same questions with
which I was tormented by her servant. Indeed, I had answered ten of
hers, before I got this answer to mine: 'The sister of whom, thou
sayst? That Frenchman who came here in the sixties for antiquities?
Yes; his sister died and was buried here, but no Christian remembers
her for good. She must have been a bad one like her brother, who was
an infidel, they say, and did not know or fear God.--What wouldst thou
see there? Art like the idiot Franje (Europeans) who come here and
carry away from around the grave some stones and