Reaching by Smyrna and Beyrout the land of his destination, and rising with serious enthusiasm to hail the first glimpse of Lebanon, Lieutenant Van de Velde wanders for some time along “the coasts of Tyre and Sidon,” stepping aside now and then to a mission station on the skirts of Lebanon, or to a native village, where, among discordant patches of Roman Catholics, of Greek Catholics, and of Mahommedans, he finds nothing but strife and bitter animosities, with not so much as a shadow of the religion for whose name, a vain badge, they hold each other in the direst hatred. Druse and Maronite and Moslem, Greek and Latin and unbeliever, every village hates its neighbour heartily and with a will; and though the Druse patronises the English Protestant, and the Maronite takes the French Catholic under his protection, Christianity vainly seeks a resting-place with either: but, where all cherish the natural intolerance of another faith than their own, the Greek Church, ignorant and bigoted, carries this evil principle farthest. Brutal violence and legal injury are alike the fate of every unfortunate convertite who ventures to embrace the somewhat different gospel preached by the missionaries of the Evangelical churches in these coasts, so long the habitation of the Gentiles. The first instance which strikes the traveller is the state of the persecuted missionary churches at Hâsbeiya, whose history he thus relates:— “Hâsbeiya has a population of 6000 souls, of whom about three-fourths belong to the Greek Church: of the remainder, 1500 are Druses, about 500 Maronites, about 100 Jews of the class called Sephardim, and as many Mahommedans belonging to the court of the Emir _Sad-Ed-Din-Shepebi_, with some few Anzairies. Mr Bird, one of the American missionaries, was the first who attempted, twenty-five years ago, to diffuse the gospel here. He established a school, and obtained a native teacher; but his effort met with no success, and the school dwindled away. In 1842 the brethren sent a colporteur from Beirût to Hâsbeiya with tracts; and it was from this man that the people first learned to attach to the name Protestant the meaning it bears among them—a true Christian. The books he left behind him would perhaps have had a good effect, if the Greek priests—like all priests who dispute with the only High Priest, Jesus Christ, his right to supremacy over the souls of men—had not found means, in their hatred of the gospel, to get possession of the books and burn them. “It was about this time that the Emir imposed certain new taxes, which caused great dissatisfaction. These taxes fell particularly hard upon the poor, who had no protector; and the thought occurred to them, ‘We may possibly find protection from the missionaries; they are merciful men.’ In this hope, forty-five of them went to the brethren at Beirût, to enrol themselves, as Protestants, under their protection.