The every-day life of the Druse is monotonous in the extreme; even their children at an early age inherit
their insipid manner of life, and leave the healthful recreation of a good game at damah, to sit down in a circle, and ape their parents in discussing politics. The Druse, like most of the natives of Syria, is an early riser; and the first thing he does after he has gone through his morning ablutions, is to command his wife to set before him a large bowl of freshly-drawn goat’s milk, or dibs. In this he sops his bread; and making a hearty and wholesome breakfast, shoulders his gun, sticks his kanjur in his girdle, lights his pipe, and then goes forth to attend to his daily occupations till mid-day. If it be the season to plough, he harnesses his oxen, and treads heavily after the furrows till nigh upon mid-day, at which time his wife or one of the family brings him out his substantial mid-day repast. In this interval he has perhaps rested himself half a dozen times, to sit and smoke a pipe: or, if a fellow-creedsman passed, he has stopped to exchange a few words—complain of the heat, ask the news, the lowest price quoted for wheat, and so on; but you seldom hear them laughing or joking with one another, and never by any chance singing or whistling; they have no idea of a tune, no taste for music, unless it be the music of money rattling in their pockets; and this has greater charms for them than the pipe of Tityrus had over the sylvan woods. At this mid-day meal there is another fresh bowl of laban milk in addition to a goodly supply of borghol, and, in summer, cucumber and some chillies, or the batingan stuffed with hashed mutton and rice.
As the sun sinks behind the conical tops of the western hills, the Druse unyokes his cattle and drives them homeward, himself shouldering the plough. Now it is that, if ever he enjoys himself, the Druse indulges
in a little relaxation. If he be fortunate enough to be possessed of a supply of powder and shot, he deviates from his right path, leaving the oxen to find their way home untended, and shouts and throws stones into every bush and down every glade he passes. Sometimes a hare starts up, sometimes a covey of partridges, or, may be, a jackal; but, whatever the game chance to be, he fires, and that with so steady and correct an aim, as to be almost certain of securing the victim. Even jackals’ skins are valuable, and will fetch their price.
Of an evening they assemble at one anothers’ houses, and there, with pipe in hand, seated in such an attitude that their knees are on a level with their nose, they talk politics by the hour. They are generally a dissatisfied, gloomy, and grumbling people; and their usual topic of conversation is exactly what John Bull is so much laughed at for, viz., the hardness of the times. They pull to pieces the pasha, the emir, the effendis—lament over the prospects of a bad silk crop, or a worse wheat harvest, speaking feelingly of the general lack of money—foretell that things will be certain to go on from bad to worse—predict a famine—prophesy a murrain amongst the cattle—see in the yellow tinge of the western atmosphere the cholera—smell out of the heavy night-dew an interminable catalogue of maladies, as absurd and unknown as any of the foregoing calamities; and having worked themselves up to an extreme pitch of wretchedness, they disperse for the night, and retrace their steps to their respective homes, croaking the while, or hooting gloomily to one another just as a parcel of ravens would croak or owls hoot as they wing their way to roost, when the distant growl of thunder foretells the coming storm.
The Druses are great hypocrites in religious matters. One of their religious books gives them this liberty, for it says:—“Embrace the religion of those who have power over you; for such is the pleasure of our Maoula, till he, to whom the best times are known, shall unsheathe the sword, and display the power of his unity.” Hence with the Turks, they pretend to be devout Moslems—fast when they fast, and feast when they feast. With the Christians they are equally devoted to the Adrah Mariam—the Virgin Mary; and in private they despise and detest both: but I believe that the Druses have really great faith and confidence in the English, whom they suppose to be all Protestants; and their idea of a Protestant is that their religion is a species of freemasonry, which very much resembles their own. Of late years political struggles on the mountains have served rather to strengthen this belief; for the Druses were invariably supported by the English, and the native attachés, agents, and other people, not only of the Consulates in the neighbouring towns, but also English travellers, lost no opportunity of impressing this fact upon the minds of the Druses’ who were already predisposed to such a belief from the fact of a tradition long existent amongst them, that many of their noblest families were descended from some of the princes amongst the Crusaders.
The Druses never introduce the subject of their religion before others; that is to say, never in such a form as to hold it forth as an argument, or an inducement for others to become proselytes, or to inform strangers of their doctrines, but they confidently affirm that a great number of their co-religionists inhabit the vast continent of India, and declare that they are to be
met with even in China, from which they believe they themselves came.
They suppose, that in England there are to this day many of the Akkals, or initiated, but of later years their confidence has been much shaken; and apropos of this, I quote an extract of a letter from one of the Akkals of the Druses, sent to me from Lebanon in 1845:—
“There are many English travellers, and some men apparently of much wisdom, who have visited us and conversed on subjects of religion; and they endeavour to persuade us that in their country there are many people who profess a creed similar to our own: this was particularly mentioned by a tall English emir. I wish you would enquire into this matter, and write us your opinion clearly; and should the report be verified, the existence of such co-religionists would at once entitle us to proclaim the protection of the English upon the same grounds as the Maronites are protected by France.”