to pay an annual sum in cash, and they know not which way to turn. The amount assessed is in most cases so excessive, that the money-lenders themselves are appalled at the prospect of lending the villagers the necessary sum, even at exorbitant rates of interest, taking the village itself as security, if their security is so heavily burdened with taxation that it may prove a white elephant on their hands. When the news was first promulgated this year, the sheikhs of all the villages in this part of Palestine united in a protest, and have sent deputations to the authorities to seek relief. But so far their efforts have been unavailing: those who refused the engagement for the payments were threatened with imprisonment if they did not sign it; and they have in most instances done so, though they are in despair at the prospect before them. In some cases they have succeeded in borrowing the money at 30 or 40 per cent; but this means handing themselves and their lands, body and soul, over to the extortionate money-lender, whom they will never be able to repay. In other cases, they are waiting in helpless misery to see what will turn up when the money is not forthcoming. But all unite in believing and hoping that practically it will be found so impossible to meet these new demands, that they will have to be abandoned by the Government and a new scale substituted. The only fault, indeed, in the new system is, that in almost every instance the amount fixed has been too high. The substitution of a fixed assessment for the old farming system, which gave rise to so many abuses, is to be commended rather than otherwise; but unless the present scale is reduced, it would seem as though it would complete the ruin of the country. When I came to take up my summer abode in Dahlieh, I found the village in the throes of financial difficulties arising from this cause, which, however, I hope they will now succeed in tiding over.
Indeed these poor villagers seem always in a peck of troubles from one cause or another, and the appearance of a couple of zaptiehs or rural police, a not uncommon occurrence, fills them with alarm. At one moment these gentry appear, to hurry them with the payment of their taxes; at another, to carry off some of their number as conscripts for the army; at another, to look for deserters: and the life of the secular sheikh, who is responsible at all points for his village, is no sinecure. The military grievance is perhaps the one they feel the most, and yet it is difficult to see how it can be remedied.
The Druse nation is divided into three sections, of which by far the greatest inhabits the Jebel Druse, a mountainous and somewhat inaccessible district to the east of the Hauran, where the Turkish authority is little more than nominal, where no conscription is attempted to be forced, and the taxation is of the lightest. In fact, the Druses there, who are governed by one of their race appointed by the Government, are practically independent. The rest of the nation inhabits the Lebanon, with the exception of these few villages in Galilee. The Lebanon Druses, who come under the international instrument known as the Réglement du Liban, are also free from conscription, excepting for militia service in their own country, and, like their neighbours the Maronites, enjoy the protection of the Treaty Powers. The small fraction in Palestine, so far from enjoying the privileges of their co-religionists in the Lebanon and Jebel Druse, are in a worse
