When I announced my intention to the villagers of Esfia, they professed the greatest enthusiasm, and the owners of the land which I had chosen for a site expressed their desire to make me a present of it, so anxious did they pretend to be that I should settle among them. I absolutely refused, however, to receive anything as a gift, and told them to name their price. This they modestly put at $650. As the most trustworthy estimate I could obtain put its value at $50, I said I would reconsider my original decision and accept it as a gift. This seemed to afford them intense amusement. Offers of this sort were merely complimentary, they said, and meant nothing. I replied that the joke of offering me the land for nothing was only equalled by their asking me twelve times its value, which I should also consider meant nothing. They came down at a bound to $250, provided I would pay the costs of the transfer. This I found to mean procuring them a valid title to the land, which they admitted they had not got, and which it would cost $50, expended in bribes to the government, to obtain. I suggested that I might in that case expend the $50 in procuring a valid title from the government in my own name, and pay them nothing, seeing that, though theoretically, they were not practically, the owners of the land. This, though it might possibly have been accomplished, would have placed me in open warfare with the village. Rather than live there under such conditions, I declined to have anything more to do with people who had shown such dishonest and grasping propensities. I will say, however, that these were confined exclusively to the Christian section of the population, who claimed the ownership of the site, and that the Druses held themselves aloof and repudiated all participation in the negotiations, expressing great indignation at the conduct of the Christians, and offering me sites elsewhere.