the mulberry and the fig, ripen their fruit in the open air.
During the greater part of the year the climate of Beyrout is delightful, but in summer it is too hot for an invalid whose chief object is to escape from heat. Many of the residents desert the city in summer, and betake themselves to the spurs of the Lebanon; where any choice of climate may be enjoyed; but there is no adequate accommodation to be got on the Lebanon, and visitors are obliged to content themselves with the rude houses of the peasantry. Nevertheless, the most delightful sites could be found for any number of houses on the ridges of Beth-Marie and Marhanna, only three hours ride from Beyrout.
The inducements to travel in Syria are by no means encouraging. Caravanseries there are none; the pilgrims must trust to the extortions of dragomans, who provide tents, carriages, and pro-, and moreover, compound for the safety of their persons and property by paying black mail to the numerous petty Arab chiefs through whose districts they pass. The country is nothing but the skeleton of the land once flowing with milk andhoney; ruined cities,naked rocks, or drifting sand; without population, without wood, and without water—desolation everywhere—of the works of man, as well as the works of Provi-
