Page:Eothen, or, Traces of travel brought home from the East by Kinglake, Alexander William.djvu/78



on its land side is hemmed in by the Druses, who occupy all the neighboring highlands.

Often enough I saw the ghostly images of the women with their exalted horns stalking through the streets, and I saw too, in travelling, the affrighted groups of the mountaineers as they fled before me, under the fear that my party might be a company of Income-tax commissioners, or a press-gang enforcing the conscription for Mehemet Ali, but nearly all my knowledge of the people, except in regard to their mere costume, and outward appearance, is drawn from books, and despatches, to which I have the honor to refer you.

I received hospitable welcome at Beyrout, from the Europeans, as well as from the Syrian Christians, and I soon discovered that their standing topic of interest was the Lady Hester Stanhope, who lived in an old convent on the Lebanon range, at the distance of about a day's journey from the town. The lady's habit of refusing to see Europeans added the charm of mystery to a character, which, even without that aid, was sufficiently distinguished to command attention.

Many years of Lady Hester's early womanhood had been passed with Lady Chatham at Burton Pynsent, and during that inglorious period of the heroine's life, her commanding character, and (as they would have called it, in the language of those days), her "condescending kindness" towards my mother's family, had increased in them those strong feelings of respect and attachment, which her rank and station alone would have easily won from people of the middle class. You may suppose how deeply the quiet women in Somersetshire must have been interested, when they slowly learned by vague and uncertain