Having visited all the most remarkable places in this part of Palestine, he returned to Jaffa, where he embarked on the 22d of May on board of a large boat bound for Acra. At this period the sea along the whole coast of Syria was infested by Maltese pirates. By an agreement entered into with the monks of Palestine, these corsairs engaged not to meddle with any of these boats within eighty leagues of the Holy Land; but, in spite of this arrangement, they frequently boarded them, seizing and carrying off into slavery every Mohammedan passenger, and pillaging both Turks and Christians with remarkable impartiality. The vessel in which Pococke was embarked escaped the clutches of these vagabonds, and arrived safe at Acra. From this part he made an excursion into the northern parts of Palestine and Galilee; visited Mount Carmel, Cæsarea, Nazareth, Mount Tabor, Cana, and the Lake of Tiberias; extended his researches to Mount Hermon and the sources of the Jordan; and then, returning to the coast, departed for Tyre, Sidon, and Mount Lebanon. The mountains in this part of Syria are inhabited by the Maronites and Druzes, people whose manners and customs I shall have occasion to describe in the life of Volney. Pococke’s stay among them was short, and his occasions of observing them few, but the result of his limited experience was favourable; for he pronounces the Maronites more simple and less addicted to intrigue than the other Christians of the East, and for courage and probity prefers the Druzes, who are neither Christians nor Mohammedans, before every other oriental people. Nevertheless it is conjectured that the latter are the descendants of the Christian armies who were engaged in the crusades. They themselves profess, according to our traveller, to be descended from the English; at other times they claim a French origin; and the probability is that they know not who were their ancestors. Like the Yezeedees of Mesopotamia, they are sometimes compelled to dissemble their incredulity and frequent the mosques; but Pococke learned that in their secret books they blasphemed both Christ and Mohammed. This hypocrisy is not altogether consistent with their character either for courage or probity. They had among them a sort of monks called _akel_, who abstained from wine, and refused to sit at their prince’s table lest they should participate in the guilt of his extortions. These men Pococke regards rather as philosophers, however, than as monks. Their religion, if they had any, consisted in the worship of nature; and from their veneration for the calf, the lingam, and the yoni, the figures of which they were said to preserve in a small silver box, I should conjecture that both they and their religion are an offshoot from the great Brahminical trunk; and the same thing may with equal probability be said of the Yezeedees, the Ismaelaah, and the Nessariah, whose doctrines had found their way into