who illuminated his house for us. We passed a most enjoyable evening.
I spent most of the time in the harim with the ladies. They wished me
to tell them a story; but as I could not recite one fluently in Arabic,
the Governor allowed me as a special favour to blindfold our dragoman,
and take him into the harim as an interpreter, the Governor himself being
present the whole time to see that the bandage did not come off. One
night Mr. Drake and I lit up the ruins with magnesium. The effect was
very beautiful. It was like a gigantic transformation scene in a desert
plain. Every night the jackals played round our tents in the moonlight,
and made the ruins weird with strange sights and sounds.

We left Ba'albak at dawn one morning, and rode to the source of the
Lebweh. The water bursts out from the ground, and divides into a dozen
sparkling streams. Of all the fountains I have ever seen, there is not
one so like liquid diamonds as this. We picketed our horses under a big
tree, and slept for a while through the heat of the day. At 4.30 p.m.,
when it was cooler, we rode on again to Er Ras. When we arrived we met
with a furious rising wind. We stopped there for the night, and the next
morning galloped across the plain to Buka'a. We had a long, tiring ride,
finally reaching a clump of trees on a height, where we pitched our camp.
The Maronite chiefs were _jeriding_ in the hollow. They came to dinner
with us, and I gave them a present of some cartridges, which appeared to
make them very happy.

The next day we continued to ride up a steep ascent. At last we stood
upon a mountain-range of crescent form, ourselves in the centre, and
the two cusps to the sea. Turning to the side which we had ascended and
looking below, the horizon was bounded by the Anti-Lebanon, with the
plain of Buka'a and the ruins of Ba'albak beneath and far away. From
this point we could see the principal heights of the Lebanon, for which