158 Bedo7d]i Tribes of the Euphrates, [ch. xxu. 



Of our journey home it will be unnecessary to 

 say anything, for, from the day of our arrival at 

 Damascus, we felt that its interest for us had 

 ceased, and that the rest was only an annoying 

 delay. We got over our first meeting with our 

 countrymen with as good a face as we could com- 

 mand, but we own it shocked us. We were not 

 prepared for the vast change a winter spent among 

 the Arabs would make in our tastes, our prejudices 

 and our opinions. It was at Beyrout that we met 

 the first wave of European life. We had found the 

 inn there deserted, and had dined in peace, sitting, 

 it is true, at a table instead of on the floor, drinking 

 our water out of glasses, and eating with knives 

 and forks instead of with our fingers, but hitherto 

 there had been nothing to excite our surprise or 

 shock our feelings. As we were sitting, however, 

 on a divan at the end of the dining-room, drinking 

 our cofiee in all the solemnity of Asiatic repose, a 

 sudden noise of voices and loud laughter resounded 

 through the house, and presently the door burst 

 open, and a tumultuous throng of men and women 

 clad ill trousers and coats, or in scanty skirts and 

 jackets, according to their sex, but all with heads 

 uncovered, and looking strangely naked, rushed 

 across the floor. There may have been a dozen of 

 them in all. Their faces were flushed and excited, 

 as if they had been drinking wine ; and they passed 

 in front of us without pause or salute to the upper 

 end of the room, and there, with no further cere- 



