feel the most, and yet it is difficult to see how it can be remedied.

The Druse nation is divided into three sections, of which by far the greatest inhabits the Jebel Druse, a mountainous and somewhat inaccessible district to the east of the Hauran, where the Turkish authority is little more than nominal, where no conscription is attempted to be forced, and the taxation is of the lightest. In fact, the Druses there, who are governed by one of their race appointed by the government, are practically independent. The rest of the nation inhabits the Lebanon, with the exception of these few villages in Galilee. The Lebanon Druses, who come under the international instrument known as the Réglement du Liban, are also free from conscription, excepting for militia service in their own country, and, like their neighbors the Maronites, enjoy the protection of the treaty powers. The small fraction in Palestine, so far from enjoying the privileges of their coreligionists in the Lebanon and Jebel Druse, are in a worse position than any of the fellaheen amongst whom they live, whether Christian or Moslem. The Christians are exempt from military service by virtue of their creed, besides enjoying the protection of the Church to which they belong, which, in its turn, is under the ægis either of France or Russia. The Moslems, though liable to conscription, are at any rate in religious sympathy with the government, and are more or less favored in consequence.

The Druses of Palestine have none of the privileges of the Christians or the advantages of the Moslems. They are regarded as a sort of pariah class, and despised as infidels by both. Hence they are robbed with impunity by their Moslem neighbors, oppressed without possibility of redress by the authorities, as being too unbelieving in matters of religion to be deserving of any one's sympathy; while their denial of the true faith does not protect them, as it does the Christians, from being called upon to serve as soldiers. The consequence is, that there is weeping and wailing every year in some eighteen or twenty villages which are in this exceptional position, when some of their young men are drafted off for service, which arises not merely from the grief of immediate separation, but from the anticipation of future trouble; for, in nine cases out of ten, not a year elapses before these recruits find opportunities of deserting, and seek their refuge in the Jebel Druse, where pursuit

by the Turkish authorities is impossible. As infidels, they find existence in a Mos. lem army intolerable, especially when they can win their liberty so easily by escaping to their co-religionists beyond the Hauran. Their desertion is the certain prelude to a visit by the zaptiehs to the village from which they were conscripted, and it thus becomes liable to a contribution, the amount of which depends more or less upon the good pleasure of the head of the police. The unhappy family to which the deserter belongs lives for the future under a constant financial pressure, thus dearly paying for the liberty which the defaulting member has purchased at their expense. It seems at first sight hard that the Druses of these few villages should not be put upon the same footing as the Christians, or their more fortunate kinsmen in the Hauran and Lebanon. But this would introduce a precedent which the government very naturally refuses to establish, as it would apply equally to the Metawalies, the Ansaryii, the Ismailians, and other non-Moslem sects in the empire, which also are not Christian; and it would give rise to great dissatisfaction among the Moslems, who would refuse to see the expediency or justice of exempting infidels of this category from the conscription to which they were themselves liable. So great is the horror of military service among these people, that a few days ago a man who had just been drawn as a conscript came to me and offered to bind himself to my service for five years in any part of the world if I would purchase his discharge; and when, after satisfying myself as to the character of the man, I accepted his offer, his gratitude, and that of his family, was unbounded. This reluctance to serve is not because they are bad fighters the experience of the Turks in their numerous conflicts with the Druses proves the contrary. but because they object to being specially selected by the officers to be placed in the front of battle, as having less valuable lives than the Moslems, and because they have to endure so much petty persecution at the hands of their comrades in the army; at least this is the explanation given by themselves.

The behavior of the zaptiehs when they visit these villages is often harsh and tyrannical in the extreme. They quarter themselves in the houses of the inhabi tants, who are obliged to keep them and their horses free of charge as long as they choose to remain, and to submit to their overbearing conduct without remon

strance. On one occasion, when a ser geant and two men were at the village, a man came to me with his breast bleeding with blows which he had received from one of the men. I was listening to his tale, when my servant appeared, white, or rather amber-colored, from indignation. He had protested against a zaptieh- the same zaptieh who had struck the man watering his horse at a trough filled with water drawn especially for my horses, and had also been beaten. I at once sought out the offender, and in the heat of the moment paid him back in his own coin. The sergeant then came up, and, afraid of the consequences, sought to propitiate After making the man stand in the sun for an hour in the presence of the villagers, I finally agreed not to make a formal complaint to his superior officer at Haifa, on condition of his apologizing publicly to the man he had struck, as well as to my servant, which he did with a great show of humility.

me.

Besides events of this public nature, there are others of a more private character, which serve to relieve the monotony of life in a Druse village. The other day, aroused by a violent uproar, I went into the street, and found a handsome young fellow, one of the sheikh's sons, surrounded by a posse of screaming women, whose abuse drove him to such a frenzy of rage that he seized a huge stone and would have hurled it at them, had not his father, whom I was in the act of questioning as to the cause of the tumult, rushed to the rescue. With great difficulty he succeeded in quelling the disturbance. Meantime I observed with surprise the young man's wife, a remarkably pretty young woman, whom he had presented to me the day before, standing in a verandah, apparently quite unconcerned at the excitement which was raging against her husband, leaning against a post, with her baby in her arms. She looked on, and smiled languidly. I said to a man standing near,

"What is all the row about? At any rate, the wife does not seem to take much interest in it."

"What would be the use?" he replied. "He has just divorced her, and all the women are abusing him for it. His father is angry with him too, for she is his niece, and his own first cousin, and it brings discredit on the family."

"Then why does he do it?" I asked. "She is a very pretty young woman, and he seemed to have no such intention yesterday when he introduced me to her as bis wife."

“Oh yes, he had. He has been planning for it for some time, only he could not find an excuse. I suppose he has made one now. He is in love with another woman, whom he wishes to marry."

Then I saw the baby put into the cradle, which a man took up, followed by the wife still smiling, and by the mother-inlaw raging, and by the sheikh sullen and dignified, and they marched off to the mother-in-law's house, which was henceforth to be the house of the discarded wife, who thus promptly evacuated her husband's premises "bag and baggage," to make room for her successor. Shortly after, the sheikh reappeared, wrote out a paper — which I afterwards heard was a paper of divorce and proceeding to the mother-in-law's house, followed by a mixed crowd of men and women, solemnly read the document, and the separation became a fait accompli. From this example, and from what I have been able to gather, I incline to the opinion that Druse women have no hearts where love affairs are concerned, though they seem to have strong maternal instincts. However, I have not been long enough among them to be able to pronounce upon this point definitely. The sheikh himself is not immaculate in respect of proceedings of this nature; but his conduct is shrouded in mystery, which I have not completely solved. It was brought to my notice in this manner. A few mornings ago my servant came to tell me that a young man wanted to see me in the kitchen. I went there, and found a youth of two or three and twenty hanging on to the kitchen table as if it were the horns of the altar. Near him was an elderly woman weeping, with whose aspect I was familiar, though I had never asked her name. To my astonishment, I was now informed, for the first time, that she was the sheikh's wife. In all my intercourse with that worthy, although I had several times dined and once even slept in his house, I had never so much as heard of her existence, but had always been waited upon by his daughter. Now it appeared that she was his second wife, that she did not live in his house, that she had had children by a former marriage, that the young man before me was one of them, that an incident had taken place the preceding night which had rendered the young man obnoxious to the sheikh's sons by his first wife, that his life was in danger, and that he had fled to me for protection.

At this point the spiritual sheikh appeared, his son had married a daugh

ter of the old lady's, and sister to the young man. I took him into the liwan, and requested him, in Scotch law parlance, to" condescend" upon particulars. As far as I could make out, the temporal sheikh's sons were jealous of their stepbrothers, and especially of this one, who made too free of his step-father's house, and they had brought against him a baseless accusation. Pressed to define this, he said that the night before the young man had lost his cow, and that he had searched for her everywhere, and, among other places, on the top of the house of the sheikh's brother, which was, in fact, the bedroom of the young wife of that worthy, and that there he had been found and soundly thrashed by the irate husband and his nephews, the sheikh's sons, who had also taken the opportunity of thrashing their step-mother. I suggested that cows did not usually roost on the tops of houses, and that the suspicions of the jealous sons and their no less jealous uncle might be well founded. This the spiritual sheikh, whose sympathies were all with his daughter-in-law's family, denied. At all events, he said that the sheikh's sons had sworn to have the young man's life, that in their present frame of mind they were sure to keep their word, and that his only safety was to remain in my kitchen. Unfortunately the temporal sheikh was absent, so I sent for his sons; but they declined to come, sending word that they felt ashamed. Next day the sheikh appeared, I represented to him the impossibility of my boarding and lodging his step son indefinitely, and asked him whether he could not protect him. He said he could as long as he himself was in the village, but not during his absence. I suggested sending the culprit off to the Hauran. He said that in that case his wife, the youth's mother, would follow her son. As he seemed to speak of this contingency with regret, I suggested that she should be sent for to meet her husband in my house, and a reconciliation should be effected. He said he desired nothing more. So I sent for the old lady, but she declined to come. I now began to feel that I was getting so deeply immersed in Druse domestic relations, that I was becoming confused by them. But there was the lad still in the kitchen, and his bloodthirsty step-brothers outside, and some thing had to be done. Finally, the sheikh said that he thought that if the young man went to stay with a Christian of my acquaintance at Esfia he would be safe, and he himself would not be heart-broken

why,

if his mother chose to follow him there, and that when the storm blew over he could come back. So he was packed off to Esfia. The mother did not follow him, but, for some reason best known to herself, remained in hiding for some days. Whenever I asked where she was, I was told vaguely "in the woods." When she did reappear, she took up her abode with the spiritual sheikh, and is always very glad to come and do a day's work for me -drying figs, making mud plaster, and so forth-whenever I can provide her with work. Meanwhile, the sheikh her husband comes and calls, and sips his coffee, and complacently regards his better half thus earning her living by drudg ery without honoring her with his notice. He has a grown-up daughter by this wife, to whom he seems much attached, and who appears to divide her affections with great impartiality between her estranged parents. What puzzles me is — but I have not ventured to ask the question with divorce so easy, they continue to live on these terms. The old spiritual sheikh, who is a most venerable and charming old man, though not without his faults, was not deterred in early life from following the prevailing custom; he had also divorced his wife; and her successor is what would be called in America the "boss" woman of the village. No tones so shrill, no language so abusive, no energy so indomitable as hers; she is the head and front of every row, and was especially active in behalf of her daugh ter-in-law's family. But she has a warm heart and generous nature, and is untiring in her efforts to render me some service in return for the one I rendered her in saving her son from the conscription, and indeed, if I would only let her, would gladly undertake the management of my whole household, and slave herself to death, without any other recompense than that which she would derive from the constant exercise of authority. During the first weeks of my residence here, she and her whole family invaded my back premises to that extent that I was obliged to place restrictions on their visiting, or rather trespassing, propensities. Still the whole village seems to consider the place common property. They take a great pride and interest in all our little efforts at beautification and landscape gardening, being much puzzled and struck thereby; and whenever they receive visits from the sheikhs of neighboring villages, which is happening constantly, they are instantly brought to see me, and if I am