Returning to the village, we found our lodging provided in the house of a Greek Catholic family; unlike to our south country houses, it was built with ponderous rafters of timber in the roofs, and these rafters and planks between them are painted in coloured patterns. It was a cheerful scene as the family sat inquiring about Jerusalem, or chatting otherwise on the mustabeh (a wide stone seat) outside, with the effulgence of the setting sun reflected on the convent before us, and then the twilight pink and violet tints upon the mountain-range behind.
Then again in the early morning, how delicious were the air and the scenery of the mountains!
“Yet sluggards deem it but a foolish chase
And marvel men should quit their easy chair,
The weary mile and long, long league to trace;
Oh, there is sweetness in the mountain air,
And life that bloated ease may never hope to share!”
While mounting for the departure, our host pressing his hospitality upon us, adjured us in these words:—“May your religion be your adversary if ever you pass my door without entering it.”
Arriving at Dair el Mokhallis we were there also received with cordiality. In the church a service was going on, gabbled over by a priest arrayed in white silk and gold, waving incense before the altar, his congregation consisting of one person, a sort of sacristan or beadle. There were some good pictures on the walls, but others together with them of degraded rank as works of art.
On being invited to visit the President, we found him a jovial, handsome man of middle age, reclining on cushions at a large window with wide views of the sea and the mountains before him, besides Dar Joon, Lady Hester’s house.
This establishment is not only the largest convent and church of the Greek Catholic sect, but also a college for clerical education; their most celebrated clergy have been trained there. The
inmates at this time, of all employments, were 110 in number, exclusive of servants. Those whom we saw appeared very well fed, and we were not a little surprised to find so many women servants employed within the walls.
A nunnery of the same rite, and rules of St Basil, with forty persons under vows, is a good building at half-a-mile distance, between which and the male institution a very excellent road has been made, notwithstanding the hilly nature of the ground; other roads are being improved, and all the contiguous grounds are in a state of the highest cultivation.
As we proceeded on our journey, the scenery became more and more romantic, till on a sudden turn of the road a wondrous picture of nature was opened before us, consisting of mountains, including our own, all sloping down into a plain in which was a river, and a village with its orchards and poplars; cascades rolled down the furrowed sides of these hills, their bounding and dashing were evident to the sight, but no sound audible owing to their distance; it was a fairy scene, or like a beautiful dream.