reading, the audience broke up and the sheik returned to me. When I asked what had been the matter, he replied, “Oh, foolish people quarrelling.” So I applied elsewhere for information, and was told that for some time past the sheik's son had been tired of his wife and in love with another woman, and had been seeking a cause of quarrel. He had apparently found it in some dispute he had just been having with his wife, and had uttered in his rage the formula of divorce, by which he dismissed her and sent her back to her family. Hence the feminine outbreak against him. The sheik had disapproved his son's conduct, as the wife was his own niece, and, therefore, her husband's first cousin, and he considered it a family disgrace; but, after what had happened, patching up the matter had become impossible, and he had nothing for it but, according to Druse law, to pronounce the divorce. I must say that the entire indifference manifested by the wife, when she followed her baby's cradle away from her husband's house, deprived her of the sympathy I should otherwise have felt. From what I have been able to gather, the Druse women, if they are pretty, are a heartless lot. Another characteristic incident was a procession of Esfia Druses to the cave of Elijah, below the monastery, in fulfilment of a vow, when a child was dedicated to a religious life, and a goat was sacrificed to God, as in the times of old. After being sacrificed, it was nevertheless eaten, which seems somewhat to deprive the performance of its merit, as the share of the Deity was the bones. There was a great clanging of discordant instruments and loud singing as they came back, some of the men caracoling around on horseback, and others, with arms clasped, dancing in a measured step, followed by a group of dancing women, in dark-blue garments, with gaudy borders and fringes and sashes, and flowing white head-dresses bound with bright-coloured scarfs. They formed a most picturesque tableau, chanting their way to their home on this wild mountain hill-top.