[p.28] Baalbec in his company. His diocese comprises the whole Christian community in the Bekaa, and the adjoining villages of the mountain. He is, with five other bishops, under the orders of the Patriarch at Mekhalis, and there are, besides, seven monasteries under this diocese in Syria. The Bishop's revenue arises from a yearly personal tax of half a piastre upon all the male adults in his diocese. He lives in a truly patriarchal manner, dressing in a simple black gown, and black Abbaye, and carries in his hand a long oaken stick, as an episcopal staff. He is adored by his parishioners, though they reproach him with a want of fervour in his intercourse with other Christian sects; by which they mean fanatism, which is a striking feature in the character of the Christians not only of the mountain, but also of the principal Syrian towns, and of the open country. This bigotry is not directed so much against the Mohammedans, as against their Christian brethren, whose creed at all differs from their own. It need hardly be mentioned here, that many of those sects which tore Europe to pieces in the earlier ages of Christianity, still exist in these countries: Greeks, Catholics, Maronites, Syriacs, Chaldeans, and Jacobites, all have their respective parishes and churches. Unable to effect any thing against the religion of their haughty rulers the Turks, they turn the only weapons they possess, scandal and intrigue, with fury against each other, and each sect is mad enough to believe that its church would flourish on the ruins of those of their heretic brethren. The principal hatred subsists between the Catholics and the Greeks; of the latter, many thousands have been converted to Catholicism, so that in the northern parts of Syria all Catholics, the Maronites excepted, were formerly of the Greek church: this is the case in Aleppo, Damascus, and in all the intermediate country; communities of original Latin Christians being found only around Jerusalem and Nablous. The Greeks HEUSN NIEHA.