afforded us but little shelter. I found a cedar-apple hanging low enough for me to break off, and to carry with me as a token of remembrance. Some of these stems are forty feet in circumference, and ninety feet high; and as it is supposed that a cedar of a hundred years old will only be half a foot in diameter, so must these be reckoned three thousand years old, which would reach back to the time of Solomon. The rain increased, and we had yet several thousand feet to descend to the nearest village, Bsherreh. The lower we came, the more slippery and dangerous became the narrow, sometimes rocky, sometimes soft, footway, which leads along the steep precipice over a yawning abyss down to the right. At a bend in a corner of a rock, we at last caught sight of our desired night-quarters, the rich, pleasant, and large village of Bsherreh, which gives its name to the whole district, and is well known on account of its strong and influential, but wild and ungovernable, and often cruel inhabitants. The rain had abated; the white houses with their flat roofs, the number of silver poplars, plane-trees, and cedars, which rose up among them either singly or in rows, formed one above another a semi-circle on a hill projecting from the right hand precipice, and appeared, as they shone with the rain-drops, as if they were just out of a fresh bath. Nothing was moving in the village; it appeared as if everything was dead in it; I rode on along a narrow path by the wall of a vineyard, with our old guide, before the rest. Suddenly, at a bend of the road, a strong voice called to us, and as I looked over the vineyard-terrace, of about the height of a man, I saw to my great surprise, twenty guns pointed towards me and the guide. The guide let the bridle of his horse fall, and raised his hands towards heaven, and cried out to the people. I immediately threw back the hood of my cloak, to show the people my European hat, and to prove to them who we were. When they saw that there were but few of us, and that we made no attempt to defend ourselves, they came in hundreds from behind the trees, surrounded us, and for a long time would not believe that we were not disguised soldiers. Some threw sticks down upon our horses from the terraces, while I was endeavouring to explain who we were to those nearest to me. Others understood the mistake sooner, and came down to the street, and took hold of the bridle of my horse. At last, a boy of about fourteen, with a frank countenance, a beautiful forehead, and red fresh cheeks, pressed through the crowd, and called out in Italian that we should not fear, it was all a mistake, we were their friends, and we had only to ride and dismount at his brother’s house. Some violent people accompanied us still, and cried out to us from the walls with the most angry gestures; while the great crowd were already satisfied, and raised a deafening shout of joy, fired their guns into the air, and led us in triumph to the village.