A third section through Syria, another degree lower, fell between Tripoli and Beirut. First, near the coast, were Lebanon Christians; for the most part Maronites or Greeks. It was hard to disentangle the politics of the two Churches. Superficially, one should have been French and one Russian; but a part of the population, to earn a living, had been in the United States, and there developed an Anglo-Saxon vein, not the less vigorous for being spurious. The Greek Church prided itself on being Old Syrian, autochthonous, of an intense localism which might ally it with Turkey rather than endure irretrievable domination by a Roman Power.

The adherents of the two sects were at one in unmeasured slander, when they dared, of Muhammadans. Such verbal scorn seemed to salve their consciousness of inbred inferiority. Families of Muslims lived among them, identical in race and habit, except for a less mincing dialect, and less parade of emigration and its results.