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nearly a hundred dishes, so thickly placed that they rose like a pyramid one over the other, the central one being an immense bowl of rice, and the surrounding ones smaller plates of stewed 'meats and sweet dishes.

Large as the salver was, there was yet not room enough for the accommodation of all; so that the master of the feast and the singers stood around us while we ate, and seated themselves only when the first comers had finished.

I observed here a striking proof of the distance at which children are kept from their parents among the Arabs. The females of the family were as perfectly secluded as in a Turkish haram; but the two sons, one about twenty-five and the other fifteen years of age, we occasionally saw when they served the coffee or nargeel, or attended to put on the benish of the father, always standing and remaining silent in his presence. Here, at this feast, both of them served in quality of attendants, standing the whole of the time; and when the rest had retired, they seated themselves at the table among the servants of the visitors.

From the supper we withdrew to a large hall, very richly furnished; and as by this time the copious draughts of rakhee had begun to operate, the mirth of the party grew more loud and boisterous. Among them was a grey-bearded doctor, who was the buffoon of the company, and gave in readily to all the jokes practised on him. This man danced in the lascivious manner of the Nautch girls, or prostitutes of the country, with a handkerchief twisted tightly into a horn, and bound round his forehead like that of the Druse women, as if to represent the same emblem. The most indecent allusions were called forth by this exhibition, and there seemed no bounds to the libertinism of speech or action. It was altogether a forcible but melancholy proof of the degraded state of manners which may result from the exclusion of women from the society of men. At the breaking up of the party, which was not until near daybreak, the doctor was rewarded with a new benish of blue cloth, of the value of five guineas at least, from the

hands of the host; and others gave him smaller garments as well as money, all of which he readily accepted. It seemed, from all that I could gather by indirect enquiry, that this man being the physician of the Christian community at Hhoms, the feast had been given expressly on his account, as an annual occasion for him to try the liberality of such of his patients as had not yet fallen victims to his prescriptions.

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FROM HHOMS, OR EMESSA, BY THE CASTLE OF EL-HHUSSAN AND THE MONUMENTS OF THE ARADII, TO TARTOOSE,

THE ANCIENT ORTHOSIA.

HHOMS, May 1. -- I was desirous of proceeding directly from hence through Hamah to Aleppo; but the wars of the Arabs, and their encroachment on the road, rendered that route impossible to be traversed without a large escort, or the protection of a caravan; the first I was not in a condition to pay for out of my own purse: nor did the urgency of the case require it; the last was not expected to depart for a period of ten days at least. It was, therefore, recommended to us to go down by Hhussan to the sea coast, which road, although by no means safe, was still more so than that of Hamah, and could be passed with an escort of two persons besides ourselves; while this, upon the whole, would be also the most expeditious. These two men were accordingly procured

for us from the Governor, by Mallim Scander, and we set out together about nine o'clock.

Going out by the ruined monument called the Soura, we saw a number of females sitting among the tombs there, after the manner of the country, and these were all habited with the blue checked cloths worn by the women in Egypt, but whether used here as a dress of mourning only I could not learn.

After leaving Hhoms by the Bab-el-Turcoman in the southern wall of the town, we continued to go west for about an hour over a level plain, the latter portion of which was laid out in a broad and excellent road, lined with gardens on each side. This brought us to the Nahr-el-Ahssy, which we crossed by a poor bridge having a mill on it. The stream was here contracted into a narrow space, but was deep and rapid, its course being scarcely less than four miles per hour, its waters a dull yellowish white, from the clayey and chalky soil of its banks in the lake above.

We entered now on a barren ground of gentle ascent, being the southern point of the first range of hills west of the Orontes. The whole extent of it was covered with the black porous stone seen almost all the way from hence to the Dead Sea; and the only productions of the soil were a dry and straight plant, rising to the height of a foot, and covered with olive brown berries about the size of peas, and a large branching thistle, whose head was of the colour of the finest port wine.

After going about three hours over this ground, meeting only a few cattle near ponds formed by rain, we passed under the small village of Tenoon, leaving it a few yards only on our right. It is seated on an eminence, and has some few cultivated spots of ground near it; but, on the whole, it presents an aspect of great poverty.

We continued a westerly course for about two hours more, gradually but gently ascending, until we came in sight of the castle of Hhussan, bearing from us nearly N.W. From hence, therefore, we kept in that direction, and our road became much

more interesting, as we went down over successive beds of rounding hills into an extensive and beautiful plain. We still saw the black porous stone throughout our track, and passed over several beds of sulphureous streams, in which these black stones were coated over with a crust of white deposit from the water.

This plain, of which we could learn no other name than that of Wadi-el-Hhussan, went up until it terminated in a narrow valley to the north, but extended itself widely until it met the northern feet or points of the range of Lebanon on the south, when it stretched away S.E. into the great plain of the Orontes, towards the lake already described. It was bounded on the west by the hills of Hhussan, on the north by higher mountains, and on the east by the hills which we had traversed, all of them cultivated to their very summits with corn and olives, which, added to the fertility of the plain itself, its light green fields and darker lines of trees, presented as rich and beautiful a picture as I had yet seen in the country. The lofty range of Lebanon terminates in several sloping points to the northward, and in the interval of plain between these points and the beginning of the hills of Hhussan, perhaps some of the rivers between Tartoose and Tripoly flow down. There are seen indeed from hence several streams in the plain below, some of which may also go to the lake of the Orontes, it being difficult else to conceive how that river so suddenly increases and expands itself there.

Crossing this plain for nearly two hours, we passed, at the end of it, some few mills near the stream, and ascended up a rising valley to the north of Hhussan, leaving it on our left. The castle there is seated on the peak of a round hill, and enjoys a commanding situation. As we went close under it, the style of its architecture appeared to be purely Saracen, as its masonry was smooth, and its outer wall filled with round towers at equal distances. Within, rose a square building of greater height than the outer wall, and the whole of the interior is filled with dwellings inhabited by Moslem families, with a chief, and a few Mohammedan soldiers. The sight of this building again altered my

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