The clearness of the air is a most striking characteristic of these regions. It is most striking, and is manifested in many things. It is seen in looking at the starry heavens. The stars are numerous, and the face of the heavens has a clearness in it, that makes the impression on the mind that we can see further into the deep and pathless abyss by which our little earth is surrounded than we can in other countries. It agrees in this with the Italian sky, but is, I think, still more clear. This clearness of the air is also manifest in looking at distant objects. They appear much nearer than they really are. I am almost perpetually struck with this in looking from Bru-ma-nah down to Beyroot, and the long line of coast which lies to the north and south. When I stand on some one of the points of the ridge that runs out towards Beyroot, as I often do, especially in my evening walks, the town appears so near, and the bay at such a short distance below me, that I can hardly get clear of the impression that I could throw a finger-stone into the bay. The ascent and descent, three or four times repeated, has, however, given the matter-of-fact proof that it takes nearly four hours of hard travel to pass the space that lies between Bru-ma-nah and Beyroot. The air, it is true, is not always equally pure and transparent; a dulness and obscurity, like that which is often observable in other countries, at times exist here. The air here is, I think, at least in the dry season, less liable to it; how the rainy seasons may affect the air in all these respects, I am not as yet prepared to say; as I have had no opportunity of making observations. But little dew falls at this place; and from all that I saw in Beyroot, there is but little there, at least in the dry season; I have not noticed it in the form of drops on the leaves, indeed I have at this place hardly observed it in the form of dampness; a slight degree of this is observable in the evening after sunset. This is our usual hour for walking, and I have observed that our clothes were a little damp on our return. I was struck, however, with the fact, that the nights we were encamped at the foot of the cone of Jebal Sun-neen, there was an abundance of dew. Our tents were wet; and the grass and vegetation, and even dust of the roads, bore witness to it. How it happened that there was so much of it up there, and so little of it down here, I leave for the wise to decide; possibly the cause may be in the neighbourhood of the fact, that the heat here and at Beyroot is remarkably uniform. It varies but few degrees in the twenty-four hours; at our place of encampment, referred to, the variation was much greater; we had great heat by day and almost frost at night.