both sides of the street, and the ground too; there can be no creeping under this time.

True; but here is a recess in the wall into which we can step until they have passed by.

What is that fellow shouting all the while at the top of his voice?

He cries Daharak! wûshhak! daharak! wûshhak! "your back! your face! your back! your face!" to warn all concerned to look sharply before and behind, or they may be

run over, crushed against the wall, or have their clothes and faces torn by this brush: a very necessary admonition.

That I perceive well enough; but are all Oriental cities. built after this fashion-streets eight feet wide, houses sixty feet high, with dead stone walls without ornament or relief of any kind? They are sad and sombre at best, and must be particularly so at night. Already the shades of evening fall heavily along these gloomy avenues, and I see no provision for lighting them.

There is none; and you observe that the shopkeepers are already shutting up, and leaving for home. Thenceforward until morning the streets are deserted and silent, with only here and there a company returning from a visit, with a servant bearing a lantern before them. The city guard creeps softly about in utter darkness, and apprehends all found walking the streets without a light. Remember, and act accordingly, or you may get locked up in quarters not very comfortable. Beirût is gradually departing from some of these customs, but enough remain to afford a type of all you will see elsewhere, except at Damascus. The style of that city is wholly different, and carries one back as by enchantment to the age of the Califs and the fantastic creations of the "Thousand Nights."

II. BEIRUT-Continued.

January 25th.

How is it that you never told me in any of your letters that Beirût is such a beautiful place?

I did; but you could not understand, and no wonder. Neither pen nor pencil can do justice to Beirût. Things hereabouts are on a scale so vast, and there is such an infinite variety in the details, that it is almost impossible to select, group together, and condense into reasonable limits enough to give an adequate idea of the whole.

That I can readily believe; and yet I am unwilling to pass away from Beirût without imprinting on memory's tablet a fairer, truer copy of her charming scenery than I have yet obtained.

Follow me, then, to the terrace of our house. It commands the whole prospect. The city and suburbs, as you perceive, are situated on the northern slopes of a triangular plain, whose base line is the shore, from Ras Beirût to Nahr Yâbis, some six miles toward Sidon. The perpendicular runs in eastward from the Ras about five miles to the foot of Lebanon, at the bottom of St. George's Bay. The hypothenuse is the irregular line of the mountains. The whole. plain is a projection seaward from the general direction of the coast, and along the base of the hills it is so low as to appear like an island to one sailing up from Sidon. The surface rises gradually from the south to the immediate vicinity of the city, where it is about three hundred feet above the sea. Thence it falls rapidly down toward the roadstead on the north by abrupt, irregular, and winding terraces. It is this feature that imparts such variety and beauty to the environs of Beirût. The substratum of this plain is every where a white marl, passing into compact limestone, and inclosing nodules of flint and thin seams of chert, similar to the adjoining hills of Lebanon. Upon this rests a very large formation of arenaceous, unstratified stone, easily wrought, and hence used from time immemorial for building. It is mixed with comminuted shells and corals, is very porous, and absorbs water with great rapidity, which renders the houses damp in winter. This, indeed, is almost the only defect in this otherwise admirable building stone. The quarries are to the southwest of the city, and from them a broad belt of loose, movable sand stretches inward from the shore, quite down to the point at Nahr Yâbis. The southeastern part of the plain is one dense olive grove, the largest and most productive in Syria. In the centre are beautiful pine forests, planted, or rather sowed by successive governors at different times, from the famous Druse chief, Fakhr ed Dîn to Wamic Pasha, the present representative of the Sublime Porte at Beirût. There are a few orange and lemon gardens, where they can be irrigated. Figs, almonds, and apricots abound, and in certain parts

ENVIRONS OF BEIRUT.

"The palm-tree rears his stately head on high,

And spreads his feathery plume along the sky;"

41

while the mulberry, melia, kharûb, sycamore, prickly oak, and many a tree and shrub of humbler name, cast abroad their grateful shade, and draw their green mantles over our lovely suburbs. Seen from any point, Beirût is charming. Many, however, are best pleased with the view from the roadstead north of the city.

I am one of those; as our steamer came bravely into harbor at early dawn, the scenery was beautiful, and even sublime. Good old Lebanon, with a diadem of stars around his snowy turban, looked for all the world like some august monarch of the universe, with his head in heaven and his feet upon the sea, and I could and did salute him with profound respect; laugh at me if you please, but I could not help it. And as morning grew into bright and glorious day, what a charming panorama was revealed all around the city!

The deep Bay of St. George sweeping around the base of the hills; the mountains of Metn and the Kesrawan on the east and northeast, rugged, steep, and lofty, shaded with pine forests, and dotted with villages, churches, and convents; the wild gorge of the Dog River, with snowy Sunnîn beyond and above; the sandy ridge of Brumanah, and Deir el Kulâh, with the deep ravine of Nahr Beirût; the hills of El Ghurb, bold and bright against the southern sky, from Aleih to Abeîh, with hamlets, and factories, and orchards peeping over the smiling suburbs; and the city itself, with white houses seated seaward on overhanging cliffs, or grouped on showy terraces and commanding hill-tops, or stowed away along retiring glens, half revealed, now quite concealed by crowding mulberry and parasol China trees, and waving festoons of vines and cunning creepers of many colors-this, this is Beirût, with the glorious Mediterranean all around, and ships and boats of various nations and picturesque patterns sailing or at rest. You will travel far ere you find a prospect of equal variety, beauty, and magnifi

cence.

Is Beirût mentioned in the Bible?

I think not. It is possible that the Berothai of 2 Samuel, viii. 8, from which David took exceeding much brass, was Beirût, though that city seems to have been situated to the east or southeast of Hamath; still, since Hadadezer was either king of Damascus, or in close alliance with it, Berothai may have been her sea-port, as Beirût is now; and after David had conquered Damascus, he might naturally enough cross over Lebanon to her sea-port, where so much of her wealth would be collected. It is not at all likely that the Berothah mentioned in Ezekiel, xlvii. 16, as one of the points in the northern boundary of the land of Israel, was our city; and from the similarity of names, and the apparent geographical position of both, we can scarcely doubt but that Ezekiel's Berothah and Samuel's Berothai were identical, and, of course, that neither of them was Beirût.

Dr. Wilson suggests that our city derived its name from Berûth, the wife of Elion, who dwelt at Byblus (Jebail), and if the chronicle of Sanchoniatho could be depended upon, I should have little hesitation in adopting the idea. This would give it a very high antiquity. This much is certain, that, at the time when the fragments of Sanchoniatho were forged, if they are a fabrication, Beirût was an important city, for it is repeatedly mentioned in them. Bochart and others are of opinion that the Baal-berith of Judges, viii. 33, was the god Baal of the city of Berith, or Beirût. Nor is this supposition too far-fetched to merit consideration; for we know, not merely from these fragments of Sanchoniatho, but from other ancient authors, that the chief seat of Baal worship was in the regions around Byblus and Beirût. Intelligent natives say that the name is derived from beer, the word for well in nearly all the Shemitic dialects. Beirût would then be the city of wells, and such it pre-eminently is. Almost every house has one. They vary in depth from twenty to one hundred and fifty feet, according to position.

After all that can be said, or even surmised, the student of our city's ancient story is surprised and disappointed to find her origin enveloped in such utter obscurity, and sighs