Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/155

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IN THE LEVANT.
127

cover anywhere on the surface of the rock those level beds cut to receive the foundations of the walls, which may be generally traced out on the sites of the early Greek citadels, and the marks of which are as imperishable as the rock in which they are cut."

After leaang Bournabashi, we went south to Chimenlai, a small village marked in the Admiralty chart No. 1608, where we were most kindly and hospitably entertained by a Turkish lady whose husband sells vallonia to the Calverts. It was the first time I had ever lodged in a Turkish house. Everything was excessively clean and comfortable. We were waited upon by a gentleman in the black livery which nature gave him. Turkish servants, more especially negroes, are good waiters, from the ease and noiselessness of their movements. Notwithstanding the superior wealth of Europeans in the Levant, they are not so well served as the Turks, because no one but a Greek or Latin Christian will condescend to be their menial. In the morning, the lady of the house, who had been invisible till the moment of our parting, appeared at the window, and throwing back her veil, expressed her great regret that we could not stay another day. Such a want of reserve is very unusual and utterly forbidden by the general laws of Turkish etiquette; but the lady was neither young nor pretty, and the Calverts are friends of the family, and buy their vallonia; and so we were treated as 'enfants de la maison.

The mosque in this village is built of large squared blocks, evidently from some ancient building. At