A DRAGOMAN S HISTORY. 67 



Maronite town in the Lebanon ; tliere we slept, and on 

 the following- day cantered along a fine road, constructed 

 by a French company, which crosses Lebanon at a height 

 of 5,175 feet. The scenery reminded me, at times, of the 

 lower parts of the Italian Tyrol. Beyrout was hot and 

 hazy ; we never saw the summits of Lebanon clear till the 

 last day of our stay, but then the bay was really beautiful. 

 Elias during the last three days, when Tucker and 

 I were alone with him, grew more confidential than was 

 his wont, and treated us to the story of his early life. A 

 native of a village in the Lebanon, he had been left an orphan 

 at an early age. His father had been a man of some 

 property, and the riches Elias inherited enabled him to 

 indulge to the full his boyish taste for smart dress. To 

 this he soon added a passion for donkeys, and gave large 

 sums for animals of the best breed and most showy ap- 

 pearance. A fall, caused by the stumbling of one of his 

 favourites, disgusted him with donkeys, and he took to 

 horseflesh. The pursuit of this last fancy had brought 

 him almost to the end of his inheritance, when he was 

 aroused to a sense of his position by the sneers of his 

 former friends. Elias sold his stud, and started afresh, 

 until, having amassed sufficient capital to set up as a 

 dragoman, his love of horses and out-of-door life led him 

 into that profession. He had now, he told us, succeeded 

 in buying back most of the property he had sold in his 

 youth, and was a well-to-do man. 



Having paid off Elias, and arranged for the despatch of 

 our Damascus purchases, to which we added some speci- 

 mens of the work of the Lebanon, we embarked on board 

 an Austrian steamer, and finally bade adieu to Syria, on 

 the afternoon of Easter Sunday, April 12th. 



Next morning we landed at Larnaca, the chief port of 

 Cyprus — a dull ugly town, where we failed in our search 



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