Page:Syria, the land of Lebanon (1914).djvu/118

SYRIA, THE LAND OF LEBANON Place." From now-extinct volcanoes at the northern end of the Druse Mountain there flowed these three hundred and fifty square miles of lava, which has broken in cooling into such a maze of irregular fissures that its surface has been likened to that of a petrified ocean. Yet this rugged region contains also little lakes, and pockets of arable soil, and numerous ruins of villages and roads and bridges which point to a considerable population in former days. Leja means "hiding-place" or "refuge," and the Druses call this forbidding district the "Fortress of Allah." The entire lava mass is honeycombed with caves. Indeed, the people of the Hauran say that one who knew the labyrinth of subterranean passages could make his way from one end of the Leja to the other without once appearing above ground. It is no wonder that this immense natural citadel, with its unmarked trails, its innumerable hiding-places in dark caves or deep-cut fissures of the rock, and its easy dominance over the dwellers on the level plain below, has always been a thorn in the side of whatever government pretended to rule the Hauran. Eighty years ago the Druses of the Leja, although they were outnumbered by the attacking force twenty to one, routed with terrible slaughter the entire army of Ibrahim Pasha, the great Egyptian conqueror.

The description of the Leja and its inhabitants which was written in the first century A. D. by Josephus would serve for any period in its wild history. [ 84 ]