We have hired the vault from a Christian, and his family next door consists of his stepmother and four half-sisters, strapping, good-looking wenches, who are not yet married, for lack of the necessary dowers. With them is staying a cousin from Acre, one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen, quite Caucasian in type and complexion, which is white and transparent as that of any Western beauty. We have great difficulty in keeping this bevy of damsels out of our room, as Arabs have no idea of privacy, and they imagine that politeness consists in squatting round in a circle and asking silly questions. Excepting for the practice it gives one in Arabic, and for a certain insight which one thus gains into the manners and customs of the natives, these visits would be intolerable, and, indeed, we have found it necessary to take stringent measures to limit them. It is more interesting to go and sit in the cool veranda outside of the little Druse place of worship, and talk to the bright young man who is passing most of his time in studying the abstruse metaphysical system of his religion, and who is far more intelligent than the Syrian Catholic priest, who also comes and sits and smokes with us with the view of obtaining, which he has not yet succeeded in doing, some knowledge of our own religious belief. Now and then an episode occurs illustrating the conditions of native existence in these parts. One day I found the village excited at an outrage which a native mounted policeman had perpetrated. On learning that he had assaulted not merely one of the villagers, but my own servant, who had refused him access to our vault, I inflicted a little corporal punishment upon him, when his officer and the village notables interfered, and interceded in his behalf. I asked the latter why they were not glad to see a man punished who, like the rest of his class, was forever persecuting them; they said that when I was gone he would come back and take his revenge upon them. I finally made the man apologize to the Druse he had assaulted, and to my servant, all which he did very humbly, fearing that unless he did so I should insist upon his receiving a still severer punishment from the Caimacan, or local governor, at Haifa. The villagers were very grateful to see one of this arrogant and overbearing class humbled, but they say that unless one can stay and protect them their last state will be worse than their first. THE DRUSES OF MOUNT CARMEL.