Lebanon, which looked towards Damascus, is now inhabited by Popish monks, in circumstances very wretched; but wild Arabs swarm almost every where in it. In the western parts of it dwells the ⟨Druses⟩, who are said to be the remains of the European Crusades, that went to those parts, in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries, for the recovery of the Holy Land. They are baptised, and hate, as we were told, the Jews and Mahometans, and have not hitherto submitted to the Turkish yoke; but the bulk of them have little more religion than the wild beasts among whom they dwell, allowing of all manner of lewdness with mothers, sisters, and daughters. In the way as we returned there came to us a captain of a village called Upshara, he invited us to dinner at his village, which we accepted of, and after dinner made him a present. This man is a Maronite, and takes caffer or toll of the Turks which pass that way with their sheep and oxen; he hath a hundred soldiers under his command who are all Christians. About two o’clock we mounted, and after three hours riding, we came to a mighty steep descent ⟨winding⟩ in and out, which is the patriarch of the Maronites house, called Aunibene: it is a very good convent, and lies under a rock: they have a bell in the church, as
