ore, and we will go up by the French steamer, a fine
large vessel called the "Ganges." We go down to the Kumruk or Custom
House, and there a little Arab boat takes us out to the steamer. In
rough weather it is very dangerous going out to the steamers, and
sometimes little boats are capsized, but to-night there is no danger.
You are now on the deck of the steamer. What a charming view of Beirut
and Mount Lebanon. Far out on the point of the cape are the new
buildings of the Syrian College, and next is the Prussian Hospital and
then the Protestant Prussian Deaconesses Institution with 130 orphans
and 80 paying pupils. There is the house of Dr. Thomson and Dr. Van Dyck
and Dr. Post, and the Turkish Barracks, and Mrs. Mott's school, and our
beautiful Church, with its clock tower, and you can hear the clock
strike six. Then next to the Church is the Female Seminary with its 100
pupils, and the Steam Printing Press, where are printed so many books
and Scriptures every year in the Arabic language. Those tall cypress
trees are in the Mission Cemetery where Pliny Fisk, and Eli Smith, and
Mr. Whiting, and a good many little children are buried. Near by are the
houses of Dr. Bliss and Dr. Lewis and our house, and you can see mosques
and minarets and domes and red-tiled roofs, and beautiful arched
corridors and green trees in every direction. Do you see the beautiful
purple tints on the Lebanon Mountains as the sun goes down? Is it not
worth a long journey to see that lofty peak gilded and tinted with
purple and pink and yellow as the sun sinks into the sea?

What a noise these boatmen make! I doubt whether you have ever heard
such a screaming before.

Now you can imagine yourself going to sleep in the state-room of this
great steamer, and away we go. The anchor comes up clank, clank, as the
great chain cable is wound up by the donkey engine, and now we move off
silently and smoothly. In about five hours we have made the fifty miles,
and down goes the anchor again in Tripoli harbor. At sunrise the Tripoli
boatmen come around the steamer. We are two miles off from the shore and
a rough north wind is blowing. Let us hurry up and get ashore before the
wind increases to a gale, as these North winds are very fierce on the
Syrian coast. Here comes Mustafa, an old boatman, and begs us to take
his feluca. We look over the side of the steamer and see that his boat
is large and clean and agree to take it for twelve piastres or fifty
cents f