“She then tells me how they lost their last head of cattle. An excellent sheep it was; which one night they forgot outside; and the wolf, visiting the village, sees it tied to the mulberry, howls for joy, and carries it off. And thus Death robs the poor woman of her son; America, of her husband; the Shylock of the village, of her home; and the wolf, of her last head of cattle. And this were enough to age even a Spartan woman. Late in the evening, after she had related at length of her sorrows, three mattresses—all she had—are laid on the straw mat near each other, and the little girl had to sleep with her mother.
“Early in the morning I bid them farewell, and pass on my way to Amsheet, where Henriette Renan, the sister of Ernest, is buried. An hour’s walk, and the incarcerated wadi and its folk lie concealed behind. I breathe again the open air of the mountain expanse; I behold again the emerald stretch of water on the horizon, where the baggalas and saics, from this distance, seem like doves basking in the morning sun. I cross the last rill, mount the last hilltop on my journey, and lo, at the foot of the gently sloping 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 façade, 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 narghile 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.