said, "Playful, isn't he?" The next moment I heard something breaking away in front, and then the Rockaway gave a lurch and stood still. Upon examination I found the new horse had tumbled down, broken one shaft, gotten the other through the check rein so as to bring his head up with a round turn, and besides had managed to get one of the traces in a single hitch around his off hind leg. As soon as I had taken all the young ones and Mrs. Sparrowgrass out of the Rockaway, I set to work to liberate the horse, who was choking very fast with the check-rein. It is unpleasant to get your fishing line in a tangle when you are in a hurry for bites, but I never saw fishing line in such a tangle as that harness. However, I set to work with a penknife, and cut him out in such a way as to make getting home by our conveyance impossible. When he got up, he was the sleepiest looking horse I ever saw. "Mrs. Sparrowgrass," said I, "won't you stay here with the children until I go to the nearest farm-house?" Mrs. Sparrowgrass replied that she would. Then I took the horse with me to get him out of the way of the children, and went in search of assistance. The first thing the new horse did when he got about a quarter of a mile from the scene of the accident, was to tumble down a bank. Fortunately the bank was not over four feet high, but as I went with him, my trowsers were rent in a grievous place. While I was getting the new horse on his feet again, I saw a colored person approaching, who came to my assistance. The first thing he did was to pull out a large jack-knife, and the next thing he did was to open

66

66

the new horse's mouth and run the blade two or three times inside of the new horse's gums. Then the new horse commenced bleeding. "Dah, sah," said the man, shutting up his jack-knife, “ef 't han't been for dat yer, your hos would a' bin a goner." "What was the matter with him?" said I. Oh, he's ony jis got de blind staggers, das all." Say," said he, before I was half indignant enough at the man who had sold me such an animal, say, ain't your name Sparrowgrass?" I replied that my name was Sparrowgrass. "Oh," said he, "I knows you, I brung some fowls once down to you place. I heerd about you, and you hos. Dats de hos dats got de heaves so bad, leh! leh! You better sell dat hos." I determined to take his advice, and employed him to lead my purchase to the nearest place where he would be cared for. Then I went back to the Rockaway, but met Mrs. Sparrowgrass and the children on the road coming to meet me. She had left a man in charge of the Rockaway. When we got to the Rockaway we found the man missing, also the whip and one cushion. We got another person to take care of the Rockaway, and had a pleasant walk home by moonlight. I think a moonlight night delicious upon the Hud

THE

HE climate of Beirut is depressingly hot during the summer, and most of the well-to-do foreign residents, and many natives, take wing in the month of June for some cool nest on Mt. Lebanon. The Hakeem invited me to count myself one of his nomadic family, and make a trial of life in the Syrian highlands. Various mules and horses were loaded with baggage and people, and dispatched in small caravans up the rough highways and byways of the mountain. The last party consisted of the Hakeem and his wife, myself, and an under-sized four-year-old individual, whom a certain grave missionary used to designate, in his kindly way, as the "small lad."

A sort of little Saharah has been formed south of Beirut by the sands of the sea; and this youthful desert, like its bigger brethren in various parts of the world, is continually encroaching on the green earth around it. With a barren intolerance, like the zeal of atheists, it seems to consider grass a nuisance, flowers a deformity, and trees a desecration of the soil. Every year, like an insidious disease, it creeps stealthily nearer the city, and has already sheeted over many once verdurous places with its shifting, glittering sterility. As it lay in herbless, pulverous heaps among the enclosures of perished gardens, it seemed to me a glaring image of the unproductiveness and death which has crept over the once intellectual and vigorous Orient. A very small degree of energy, on the part of the Beirutees, would save their land from its fatal presence; inasmuch as a single hedge of the large native cactus will resist its advances for many years, fronting as firmly against its desultory hostility as Napoleon's old infantry against the wild cavalry of the Mamelukes. Of late, something has been done in this way-not by the people, but by the government. Various pashas in Syria have signalized their respective advents by planting groves of pine across the track of the sandy crusade. These trees flourish courageously under difficulties, arrest the evil, at least so far as their shadow extends, and in time restore the soil beneath them to some degree of fertility.

Notwithstanding the labors of these

philanthropic pines, we had to walk our horses through abundant sand-rolls before reaching the green valley of the Nahr-Beirut. To our right rustled the faded green foliage of an enormous olive grove; to our left steamed the hot little delta of the river, richly productive of mulberry-trees and fever and ague. A few moments carried us across the green level, and brought us to the base of the long ascent. Mount Lebanon roads seem to have been constructed by goats for the use of goats; but Syrian horses, never having seen anything better, scramble up them with wonderful contentedness and agility. Mountaineers, from lofty dove-cotes of villages, met us continually on the way, often laden with produce for the city, yet skipping as lightly as birds down the steep rocky slopes. Women passed us, heavily burdened, not stooping under the weight, however, but stepping with a singular perpendicular strut, which eventually becomes habitual at all times. Many were provided with help-meets, in the shape of mules and donkeys, and put upon them the responsibility of backing the market merchandise down the difficult roads. Almost every one of these people gave us a pleasant smile as they met us, and, putting one hand to the breast, wished, "May God bless your morning!"

Under this hail of benedictions, we clambered one huge steep after another, stumbled into deep, fervent valleys, and rose on the opposite side to still more airy eminences. Beirut and its gardens draped themselves in the loveliness of distance; the sea grew grand and glorious, and immeasurable beneath us; white sails fluttered into sight on its horizon, and seemed to wave to us, as if in encouragement; long vistas opened down terraced valleys, dark-green at the bottom, with lemon and orange-trees, and mingling afar with other chasms of verdure; flatroofed villages looked up at us in wonder from deep recesses, or down in contempt from dizzy elevations above; and to the east rose the great uneven ridge of Lebanon, bare, brown, and trackless, or crowned in its higher regions with a chaplet of glittering snow.

A shocking bad goat-track tumbled

us into the rough, stony ravine, which lay like an immeasurable trench, almost encircling Bhamdun, the goal of our journey. The succeeding ascent was the steepest that we had yet encountered, and required remarkable spryness on the part of the horses and great cohesive qualities in the riders to enable both parties to reach the summit in company, or even at all. But my beast was an old mountaineer, and would have climbed anything short of a lightning-rod, or a rope ladder. Every snort of his venerable nostrils seemed to say, "Now then! never say die! all together, four legs!" And, with the Howadji sitting on his tail, the energetic quadruped surmounted the edge of the acclivity and wagged his puffing nose through the narrow streets of the village. Low houses of roughly hewn stone flanked us on either side, drawn up in disorderly ranks like militia-men on parade, and, so to speak, squaring their elbows towards all points of the compass after a very independent and squatterlike fashion. Women with toilworn but good-humored faces smiled from the doors as we passed, and abundantly blessed our mornings. Little children, whose mothers had inveterate hydrophobia, scrambled out of the way of our horses, appearing wonderfully old and dignified in their thick head-dresses, their long robes and their slipshod shoes. At the other end of the village, where it fronted on its orchards of vines and mulberries, we pulled up at the door of the Hakeem's summer mansion. Yusef, the cook, and Jurjus, the man of all work, rushed out with smiling, hospitable faces to receive us. My horse was politely shown to his stall in the basement story; and I was conducted into the parlor directly above my respected quadruped's eating and sleeping apartment. Leaving him to transact his own affairs, I made a minute inspection of that part of the house which was intended for humanity. The center of the building was a hall about twelve feet wide and twenty-seven feet long. The floor at on end was raised some eight inches, forming a species of reception room which had been furnished with low divans. This recess was lighted by a double-arched window which looked out on a neighboring back yard, vocal all day with the shrieks and howlings of some ill-used Arab babies. Half the front of the hall was perfectly open, sim

ply fenced in by a wooden railing and the rude pillars of three Saracenic arches which supported that part of the roof. From thence you could look down into the valley below the village, and away over rocky hills to the distant gleam of the Mediterranean. Oh what

sunsets of gold used to sit on those waters, like famous empires on the horizons of the past, and slowly lose their splendor and vanish into the night! On various sides of the hall and opening into it, were posted, like outworks, the Hakeem's room, the room of the girls, my room and the parlor. The latter and the raised dais at the end of the hall served in case of need as the dormitories of visitors.

The floor all over the house was of mud, tamped solid and well dried, but so uneven that no school-boy would have accepted it as giving fair play to his marbles. I used to indulge in long reveries over its diminutive plains and valleys and highlands, looking down through wreaths of tobacco smoke from the elevation of my stature, as the gods looked through clouds from Olympus, and imagining it peopled with some infinitesimal race, living and laboring and squabbling upon its circumscribed geography in minute mockery of earth and her restless inhabitants. Once a week a dirty-trowsered village maiden used to wash this floor with a solution of red clay, and then polish it with a smooth pebble until it shone like a pair of new boots. Here and there mats were spread, to render the footing less damaging to the complexion of white shirts and yellow slippers.

As for the ceiling, it looked so ponderous, and, at the same time, so unstable, that it was at once a comfort and a terror. Logs, stripped of their bark, and otherwise in a state of nature, stretched from wall to wall, and formed the substratum. Crosswise upon these reposed short bits of narrow board; large flat stones lay like an aërial quarry over them; the whole was thatched, so to speak, with four or five inches of well-tamped earth and gravel. Notwithstanding that it was heavy enough to crush a village, our roof would not always keep out the rain, which dripped cheerfully through in wet weather, and added little lakes and oceans to the scenery of the geographical floor. The corners between the beams and crosspieces afforded excellent building-spots

to the swallows, who accordingly squatted there, and used to sail comfortably in and out all day. These loquacious birds made a good deal of unnecessary racket, strongly reminding me, by their vociferous way of doing business, of the Arab boatmen who had raised such a hubbub about our arrival in the country.

How

My room was the largest in the house. It had been designed by the respectable founder of the edifice for a grand dining hall fit for the Sultan or the Prince of Persia to over-eat themselves in. Across the end by the door stretched a stone pavement, separated from the rest of the apartment by a curious wooden fence. This, I suppose, was meant as a standing place for the servants, or the dogs, or the pots and kettles, or something else that was only wanted at intervals during the meals. Above it there was a large round hole in the wall, intended for the convenience of passing in dishes from the next room. this orifice may have answered its prandial purpose I cannot say; but I found it a rather embarrassing addition to the capabilities of a bed-chamber. There was also a smaller hole in the door, for which I could imagine no earthly use, unless the former occupant had a kitten or a puppy to whom he wished to grant free ingress and egress. I sometimes thought, indeed, that it might be a hopping-out place for the rats or fleas; but, as they could hop in there just as easily, this supposition did not seem to merit much respect. Finally, there was a door into the next room, with a crack so wide between it and the door-post that Ichabod Crane, or any other thin person, might have slipped through comfortably without in the least deranging the shriveled portal.

My dormitory had blind walls on three sides, but was sufficiently lighted, for sleeping purposes, by a window which opened into the central hall. All the windows in the house had been furnished with glass, which was a constant astonishment to the aboriginals of the village, human and quadruped. One morning, an ignoramus of a cat got into my room through one of the holes aforesaid, and, on my making some manual remonstrances against his stay, attempted to get out through the window. He plunged unsuspectingly at the clear pane, rolled back with a squeal on the

floor, tried it again with great emphasis, and fairly butted through, coming down on the outside amid an avalanche

of broken glass. Looking somewhat stupified by the shock, he set his tail a-kimbo and made off at half-speed, no doubt very much surprised at the density of the atmosphere between my window-sashes.

On another occasion, I saw the schoolmaster of the village nonplused by the same mystery. A Turkish Pasha had called to see the Hakeem, and was on reception in the parlor. His presence being noised abroad, the principal inhabitants of Bhamdun, and among them grammatical Abu Mekhiel, came to present their respects to his excellency. The Turk, a stout good-humored personage, sat on one of the divans, and the magnates of the hamlet crossed their legs comfortably on the floor. The dignitary spoke very little Arabic, the mountaineers spoke not a word of Turkish, but both sides smoked cheerfully, and time passed away like a pinch of snuff. Suddenly an accidental knock of the Pasha's elbow sent the coal from his pipe on to the rush matting which partially covered the floor. Abu Mekhiel eagerly seized the inflamed morsel and tried to throw it out of the window. As it was shut, he rapped his knuckles smartly, burnt his fingers, dropped the coal, and called for the tongs. It was an immense incident in the monotony of the visit; and even the stout Pasha laughed and chuckled at the blunder of abashed Abu Mekhiel.

In describing our house, I must not forget the rats, which were, perhaps, its most numerous inhabitants. They seemed to think that it belonged to their order, and haunted it, especially by night. They rattled and rolled through invisible galleries like diminutive four-legged peals of thunder. The Hakeem had famous sport among these creatures, and blazed away at their shiny eyes and bald tails until we thought he would eventually get rid of them by burning the house up. They were a perpetual bugbear to the small lad, who was afraid to sleep alone lest they should climb up the bed coverlet and nibble at his toes.

I have adverted to the union of stable and house in one edifice. This architectural approximation of the human and animal kingdom was the cause of various uncouth interruptions and interludes in our drawing-room conversa.

tions. A speaker would be diverted from the train of his ideas by an outrageous scream, or a tattoo of kicks from some excited beast below. Whenever a strange horse was introduced into these subterranean quarters, there was almost sure to be a clamorous disagreement. Whether they wanted to eat off each other's tails, whether they tried to annex each other's portions of barley, or whether they differed on some other question of an abstract nature, at all events, they were never able to come to an understanding without an unreasonable uproar.

Visitors kept perpetually dropping in, and we almost always had some puffy-trousered individual cuddled up on the divan, or against the wall, his pipe sending a wreathing fragrance aloft among the rats and swallows. As long as I staid in Bhamdun, probably never a day passed without a dozen or twenty of these turbaned exits and entrances. Occasionally, my alien and inquisitive ears would be delighted by an observation of the most innocent simplicity. One day the old Maronite priest of the village lounged into the hall, and smoked his pipe in a comfortable taciturnity for half an hour. Noticing the swallows at last, he remarked that a blessing lay upon the house, since it was inhabited by those good-omened birds.

"Why so?" asked the Hakeem. "Do you not see that those swallows are constantly bringing earth in their bills to mortice their nests?"

Uncle Khalil, according to the custom of Syrian young folks when speaking familiarly to one who has attained the ripeness of middle life. Of a slender frame, slow and easy motions, a face decidedly more northern than southern in its features, Khalil always entered with the heartiest and kindliest smile. He wore a dark blue jacket, full dark trowsers, a large white turban, and always carried a short pipe, sometimes gravely smoking it, sometimes using it gesticulatively to point a moral or adorn a tale. He was a good representative of a large class, half farmer, half trader, to be found scattered all over the mountain. He was a moderate landed proprietor, holding mulberry orchards and grain land on different parts of the terraced hillsides of Lebanon, a bit here and a bit there, according to the fashion of the mountaineers, who never own a farm all lying together.

The time and capital not devoted to his own agriculture, he gave to traffic in the produce of other people. In the spring he usually bought a flock of sheep of the Kurdish shepherds, who come annually with their broad-tailed stock from the elevated plains about Erzeroum. Over and above his woolly quadrupeds, the Kurd always threw in his huge sheepskin coat, and his fierce sheep dog. Khalil then placed his flock under the care of some hireling shepherd, and set out on a retailing tour among the villages, selling to each family a sheep. Some sales were for cash, but more were for cocoons, to be taken at a stipulated price when the silk season should arrive in the succeeding July. If credit was thus given, the buyer paid Syrian interest, which varies from fifteen to thirty or forty per cent., by the year. Khalil had a large market to choose from, for a great proportion of the terraced declivities of Mount Lebanon, as well as the shore plain at its base, is devoted to the culti vation of the mulberry. The silk of Bhamdun alone will average nearly a ton after it is wound from the cocoons. The women, who exclusively take care of the worms, become very fond of them, caress them, kiss them, and call them endearing names. After gathering his cocoons, our friend Khalil wound off the imperfect ones, on the coarse Arab reel, and sold the better sort to the French or English merchants, who have established flourishing filatures in va