CHAPTER XX. 
THE SYRIAN DRAGOMAN. 
Any body stationed on the roof of Demetrie’s hotel, near 
Beirut, might have seen, with a good spy-glass, early in the 
morning on the 23d of November, a steamer bearing the Aus¬ 
trian flag, paddling its way into the harbor. The decks of 
that steamer were crowded with pilgrims of all nations— 
Turks, Arabs, Russian and Polish Jews, and Greeks ; but 
conspicuous on the quarter-deck were two Americans, who 
might also have been seen with the spy-glass above men¬ 
tioned—one a tall slender gentleman, with a red book in his 
hand; and the other rather shorter, but not too short, habited 
in the unpretending garb of a backwoodsman. Any body 
might know in a moment that the first was a Southerner, and 
the last no other than your friend of the present writing. 
The weather for nearly two months previously, during 
our wanderings in the Levant, had been unusually fine; and 
for the past month, in Constantinople and Smyrna, we had 
enjoyed cloudless skies and a climate of delightful temper¬ 
ature. Ah ! if I could only give you a description of all the 
fine views of bare mountains, palm trees, and mosques that 
we saw along the shores of Asia Minor, or the glorious sunsets 
among the Greek Islands ! Such scenes, however, are for 
artists and poets, not for practical men like us, who go about 
the world to study the realities of life, and dissipate the mists 
of fancy. 
Scarcely had we cast anchor in the harbor of Beirut (which, 
by the way, like all the harbors on the coast of Syria, is a 
very bad one), when we were boarded by a whole legion of 
hotel-keepers and guides. Books of recommendation were 
thrust at us by lusty fellows in petticoats, who talked English, 
