g now to do but to check off the freight as it comes
alongside before it's lowered in the hold, and look out at the
unchanging picture around us, which is so familiar that I believe I
could paint it with my eyes shut if I were an artist. Talk of the
beauty of Beyrout, indeed! To my taste, it's the most monotonous hole I
was ever in in my life, and I hate it!"

And yet, in spite of Charley Onslow's peevish criticism, the scene
around him and his companion was charming enough.

The _Muscadine_ was anchored out in the roads, close to the jutting
promontory on which the lazaretto buildings were lately erected, that
stretched out like an arm into the harbour; and the view from her deck
presented a beautiful panorama of the semi-European, semi-Oriental town,
nestling on the very edge of the blue waters of the Mediterranean, and
surrounded by gently-undulating hills, that were terraced with
symmetrical rows of trim olive-trees and vineyards, rising tier upon
tier, the one above the other; amidst which, occasionally peeped out
slily the white cupola of some suburban villa belonging to one of the
wealthy merchants of the port, or the minaret of a Moslem mosque,
standing out conspicuously against the shrubbery of foliage formed of
different tints of green, from the palest emerald shade to the deepest
indigo, that culminated finally in the cedar-crowned heights of the
mountains of Lebanon in the purple distance.

It was not a quiet scene either, as might have been imagined from the
idle ennui of both the young sailors, whom it seemed to have well-nigh
bored to death. On the contrary, to an unprejudiced looker-on it was
quite the reverse of being inactive.

In the foreground the harbour was lively enough, with boats and
caravels, and other Turkish craft of all sizes and shapes, darting here
and there like great white-winged dragon-flies, as they were wafted
swiftly one moment by some passing whiff of air, or lying still on the
surface of the sea as the wind fell and they were temporarily becalmed,
until another gust came from the hills to rouse them out of their
noontide sluggishness.

Amongst them, too, were ships' boats belonging to the different vessels,
anchored, like the _Muscadine_, out in the roads, being pulled to and
from the shore, anon laden with merchandise, anon returning for more;
while, of course, the dingy black smoke and steady paddle-beat of the
inevitable steamer, that marks the progress of Western civili