failed to offer them with the greatest good-nature, and seemed highly rejoiced when I accepted some.  On the present evening several of these people were assembled round me, and I had an opportunity of noticing the costume of this mountain tribe.  Excepting the head-dress, it is the same as that worn throughout all Palestine, and indeed in the whole of Syria; the women have blue gowns, and the men, white blouses, wide trousers, and a sash:  sometimes the women wear spencers, and the more wealthy among them even display caftans and turbans.  The head-dress of the women is very original, but does not look remarkably becoming.  They wear on their foreheads a tin horn more than a foot in length, and over this a white handkerchief, fastened at the back and hanging down in folds.  This rule, however, only applies to the wealthier portion of the community, which is here limited enough.  The poorer women wear a much smaller horn, over which they display an exceedingly dingy handkerchief.  During working hours they ordinarily divest themselves of these ornaments, as they would render it impossible to carry loads on the head.  The rich inhabitants of the mountains, both male and female, dress in the Oriental fashion; but the women still retain the horn, which is then made of silver.

The village of Maschdalanscher is built of clay huts thatched with straw.  I saw many goats and horned cattle, and a good store of corn lay piled up before the doors.

We were assured that the roads through the mountains inhabited by the Druses and Maronites were very unsafe, and we were strongly urged to take an escort with us; but as we met caravans almost every hour, we considered this an unnecessary precaution, and arrived safely without adventure of any kind at Damascus.

July 3d.

This morning we rode at first over a very good road, till at length we came upon a ravine, which seemed hardly to afford us room to pass.  Closer and more closely yet did the rocky masses approach each other, as we passed amongst the loose shingle over the dry bed of a river.  Frequently the space hardly admitted of our stepping aside to allow the caravans we met to pass us.  Sometimes we thought, after having painfully laboured through a ravine of this kind, that we should emerge into the open field; but each time it was only to enter a wilder and more desert pass.  So we proceeded for some hours, till the rocky masses changed to heaps of sand, and every trace of vegetation disappeared.  At length we had climbed the last hill, and Damascus, “the vaunted city of the East,” lay before us.

It is certainly a striking sight when, escaping from the inhospitable domains of the mountain and the sandhill, we see stretched at our feet a great and luxuriant valley, forming in the freshness of its vegetation a singular contrast to the desert region around.  In this valley, amid gardens and trees innumerable, extends the town, with its pretty mosques and slender lofty minarets; but I was far from finding the scene so charming that I could have exclaimed with other travellers, “This is the most beauteous spot on earth!”