Page:Syria, the land of Lebanon (1914).djvu/58

SYRIA, THE LAND OF LEBANON yards up these steep, slippery shafts. One day, while walking along the top of the cliff, I came upon the upper end of a natural chimney whose formation appeared so unusually regular that I became curious to see what it might lead to. So I slid down twelve or fifteen feet and dropped into the ashes of a recent fire which had been built in the center of a cozy little cave high above the water. The rocky point of the cape, honeycombed with dark passages and secret hiding-places, is a favorite resort of smugglers, especially on moonless nights; and in the bazaars of the city you can buy many articles which have not been submitted to the extortions of the Turkish customhouse. While I was a resident of Beirut, the "king of the smugglers," who lived near me, killed three revenue officers who were interfering with his illicit trade. Bribery and intimidation, however, soon removed all danger of prosecution for his various crimes; and a few days later I saw him driving defiantly along the Shore Road in his elegant carriage.

Beirut has suffered so severely from earthquakes, as well as from besieging armies, that there remain no traces of very old buildings except some columns of reddish Egyptian granite. Only a few of these can now be seen above ground or lying under water at the bottom of the harbor, where doubtless they ere rolled by earthquake shocks; but from the frequency with which they appear whenever [ 32 ]