Mysseri, of course, still travelled with me, but the Arabic was not one of the seven languages which he spoke so perfectly, and I was therefore obliged to hire another interpreter.  I had no difficulty in finding a proper man for the purpose—­one Demetrius, or, as he was always called, Dthemetri, a native of Zante, who had been tossed about by fortune in all directions.  He spoke the Arabic very well, and communicated with me in Italian.  The man was a very zealous member of the Greek Church.  He had been a tailor.  He was as ugly as the devil, having a thoroughly Tatar countenance, which expressed the agony of his body or mind, as the case might be, in the most ludicrous manner imaginable.  He embellished the natural caricature of his person by suspending about his neck and shoulders and waist quantities of little bundles and parcels, which he thought too valuable to be entrusted to the jerking of pack-saddles.  The mule that fell to his lot on this journey every now and then, forgetting that his rider was a saint, and remembering that he was a tailor, took a quiet roll upon the ground, and stretched his limbs calmly and lazily, like a good man awaiting a sermon.  Dthemetri never got seriously hurt, but the subversion and dislocation of his bundles made him for the moment a sad spectacle of ruin, and when he regained his legs, his wrath with the mule became very amusing.  He always addressed the beast in language which implied that he, as a Christian and saint, had been personally insulted and oppressed by a Mahometan mule.  Dthemetri, however, on the whole, proved to be a most able and capital servant.  I suspected him of now and then leading me out of my way in order that he might have the opportunity of visiting the shrine of a saint, and on one occasion, as you will see by-and-by, he was induced by religious motives to commit a gross breach of duty; but putting these pious faults out of the question (and they were faults of the right side), he was always faithful and true to me.

I left Saide (the Sidon of ancient times) on my right, and about an hour, I think, before sunset began to ascend one of the many low hills of Lebanon.  On the summit before me was a broad, grey mass of irregular building, which from its position, as well as from the gloomy blankness of its walls, gave the idea of a neglected fortress.  It had, in fact, been a convent of great size, and like most of the religious houses in this part of the world, had been made strong enough for opposing an inert resistance to any mere casual band of assailants who might be unprovided with regular means of attack:  this was the dwelling-place of the Chatham’s fiery granddaughter.