were dressed in native costume. The nuns, who are very superior, lady-like French women, wore white caps, with broad plain muslin frills, and little black hoods over them, and the plainest of plain black stuff dresses. They looked very quaint, but cheerful and lovable. They are most persevering in their schemes for proselytizing and educating Arab girls. Some of their pupils speak a little French, but it is very difficult to secure the regular attendance of children at the schools. They are sad little truants.
One of the sisters is a careful doctor and skillful surgeon, and thus obtains great influence over the natives, to whom she distributes medicines supplied from France. A Hakîm—a doctor of medicine, male or female—can gain admittance and respect almost any where. A Romish missionary staff is never considered complete without a good physician.
The children, marshaled by the Sisters of Mercy, made way for us, and we went down to the Altar of the Virgin. It is of pure white alabaster, laboriously and elaborately carved, but badly designed, rococo. Sweet basil bloomed all round it, and tapers burned there brightly. Near it is a part of a granite column, said by a monkish tradition which is indorsed by the Church—to be a fragment of the very room in which Mary stood when the angel Gabriel appeared to her. The room itself was conveyed by a miracle to Dalmatia, and afterward to Loretta, where thousands of pilgrims visit it! The kitchen of the Virgin is still shown under the church at Nazareth. Women now and then came down the steps and prostrated themselves, beating their breasts, and repeating Ave Marias, in Arabic, as rapidly as possible; then they kissed three spots indicated by ornament on the pavement under the altar. The walls of the church are hung with painted linen, which produces exactly the effect of fine old tapestry, and I did not discover that it was only imitation till I handled it. In the court-yard of the convent there are several fragments of ancient stone carving introduced in the modern
