446 Notes of a Tour through Palestine. [Aug. 



place, even showed us his haram or the female apartments ; but we 

 are the first Franks who had been admitted to them. They are truly 

 magnificent ; realizing the descriptions of what one reads in the 

 Arabian Nights. Spacious courts, with fountains and reservoirs 

 and orange trees growing in the rooms all around, ornamented with ara- 

 besque painting and gilding, windows of painted glass, and luxurious 

 divans. There is not a house that has not a fountain playing the 

 whole day ; but to this is attributed the unhealthiness of the city, 

 which is extremely subject to fevers and agues ; the density of the 

 gardens, however, not a little contributing. The inhabitants give 

 themselves up to continual enjoyment; they think of nothing but how 

 to get most " keef," a word they continually use to express their in- 

 dolent gratifications under the shade of their fruit trees, by the side 

 of the numerous streams that flow through and round the town. 

 All have a voluptuous and dissipated look, so that a Damascene can 

 be recognized any 7 where. I own I should not like to live there, nor 

 to give myself to such an indolent Epicurean mode of existence, cou- 

 pled as it is with continual fevers and visceral complaints. The bazars 

 are very fine, and well but not grandly supplied. Ices abound, and 

 iced water is hawked about the streets for even the poorest. We re- 

 turned by way of Balbeck, the finest remnant of antiquity I have yet 

 seen ; add to which, the air is cool and salubrious, and the landscape 



around remarkably rich and beautiful. Mr. P and our other two 



friends finding it too hot, went straight back to Bieroot, and I alone took 

 a detour by the cedars of Lebanon, crossing the highest summit of the 

 mountain among the snow, to see the small and remarkable clump of 

 trees, the only ones now remaining, and returned by way of Eden and 

 Tripoli, to this place. 



I have on the whole been delighted beyond my utmost expecta- 

 tions, and I think have seen every thing in the most satisfactory man- 

 ner. The climate approaches so nearly to that of Europe, and so 

 many of the natural productions are the same, that a thousand agree- 

 able recollections are brought to the mind of a man who has been 

 long from home, as we Indians have been, which afforded a pleasure 

 I never dreamt of. Such were the feelings with which I first heard the 

 cuckoo — such those with which I first trod on a bed of snow, and saw 

 a flight of noisy jackdaws among the ruins of Jorash. The dog- 

 roses, wild honeysuckles and brambles, the pine tree, and mountain 

 ash, recalled many scenes of younger days in Scotland ; while fields of 

 ■wheat and barley, mixed with jowarree and chenna, the vine, the fig, 

 the olive, the mulberry, gave to the whole a character peculiarly its 

 own. Great quantities of silk are manufactured all along the north 



