Brides are bought and sold here now as they were in olden times, though there has been a great increase in price. Hebrews are good traders and always have been. In Bible times they bought wives for twenty-five dollars, but now brides in this country sell for from seventy-five to one hundred dollars. I believe the men would buy them even if the price should be still higher. Of course they would buy them. Women are slaves. They are man’s burden-bearers and nothing more! The Mohammedans have two, four or a half dozen wives. The Sultan has five hundred, and the people follow his example as far as possible. The wedding festivities, consisting of music, songs and dancing, last for a week, and then the bride is converted into a slave for her husband. In a few months she will probably be a slave for his next wife! Monday morning bright and early, we fold our tents and renew our pilgrimage. Lebanon continues steep, rocky, rough and bare. Not a bush, not a blade of green grass, nothing but a long mountain range covered with loose stones, is to be seen. The hills are very productive—of rocks. Now and then we come to large camel pastures. As these long-legged, high-headed, two-storied animals are fat and flourishing, I conclude that they live on wind and stones. In the road we meet hundreds and hundreds of big camels and little camels, dun-colored, mouse-colored, white and black camels, laden with all kinds of oriental merchandise. Late in the afternoon, we for the first time catch a glimpse of snow-capped Hermon, some fifty miles away to the southwest. We take off our hats to this mountain monarch, promising him a visit later on. We now descend into the green valley, sixteen and a half miles wide and some sixty miles long, lying between Lebanon and anti-Lebanon. We want to see the Cedars of Lebanon; and in order to do this we are compelled just here to quit the Damascus road, and travel for three days up this beautiful valley, keeping close to the Lebanon side.