The female population of the village, in their gayest dresses, had preceded us on donkeys. I accompanied the sheik, who had drawn up on a little plain outside the town about a dozen horsemen as an escort, and thus, after a little of the usual imitation of the equestrian game of the djerrid, at which, in default of the real thing, the horsemen delight to exercise their horses by a mock encounter, we formed in a sort of procession, the young men of the village on foot, armed with great clubs, chanting songs of love and war, as they marched in front. There were from two to three hundred persons collected on the flat space in front of the church which the Carmelite monks have recently erected on the supposed site of Elijah's altar. And here the usual dancing-circles were formed, and the fun of the day commenced. But it was melancholy fun. How could it be otherwise, when the young men and women are not allowed to dance together, scarcely even to speak to one another? It was quite pitiful to see half a dozen of the prettiest girls that could be found in Syria sitting under the shade of a tree, gossiping, and looking at half a dozen fine, stalwart, handsome young fellows prancing about on their horses, or singing and dancing, without there being the ghost of a chance of a flirtation. The girls cooked together and ate together and danced together and sang together, and the young men amused themselves apart as best they could. As the delights of flirting are unknown to them, I suppose they did not miss them; but as I looked at the young people of both sexes thus divided, I wondered what would be the result of a similar experiment if it were tried at an American picnic. It was a curious sight to see a bevy of at least fifty women and girls rush into the Carmelite chapel, which during the week is left in charge of a Druse, who on this occasion did the honours of it to his coreligionists, who scampered all over the premises, gazing wonderingly at the altar ornaments, and forming large dancing-circles on the flat roof. I could not exactly find out why the Druses chose the place of Elijah's sacrifice as the scene of their festivity, but there is no doubt that the traditions of a special sanctity are attached to it in their religion as well as in that of the Roman Catholics, and that the slaughter of the eight hundred false prophets by the holy man whose prayers for rain were heard on this spot, and upon whom the divine vengeance was invoked, appeals to a sentiment which is common to the Christian, the Moslem, and the Druse religions. [1] A year later the thieves were found, and the Circassian colony to which they belonged was compelled by the government to refund the Germans the value of the horses. ARMAGEDDON.—THE BOSNIAN COLONY AT CÆSAREA.