At this service, it is needless to observe, that there was no separation of sexes in the congregation. The girls of the school (who are all taught English) were there placed by themselves, and prettily dressed, wearing the Oriental izâr, (or large white veil,) with flowered borders, a novelty to us.
Returning to the mission-house, the late afternoon and the time of sunset and twilight were spent in rational conversation of Christian character. And such was our Sabbath-day of devotion and repose.
How glorious were the colours spread over the vast extent of mountain and sea, modified by length of shadows as the sun declined! Oh how
deep are such beauties and the perception of their value laid in the innermost recesses of our soul’s nature, only to be completely gratified in the eternity to come. Here, below, we have gorgeous tints differing in succession, even after actual sunset, to be followed by a delicate after-glow, which again gives place to the splendour of night. And as in earth, so in heaven, with the exception of night; for surely there will be alternations of beauteous scenes above; surely there will be developments and variety in light, colour, music, harmony, and the rest of those “pleasures for evermore,” which are everywhere emanations from the direct love of “Him who first loved us,”—His gifts, who even here bestows prismatic hues upon icebergs in the arctic circle, and a rosy flush to the peaks of Jebel Sanneen in the Lebanon.
Monday.—Letters were brought at a late hour last night in four hours from Bayroot, giving recent intelligence from our fleet—all political affairs going on successfully.
Everybody speaks well of our host the governor, and his family. He is a studious man, and has acquired from the Americans a good deal of history and general knowledge; his youngest brother attends the natural-history class of the mission-school. He is a relative of the famous Abu Neked, and his wife (Druses have but one wife each) is of the Jonblât family. The ancestral mansion he inhabits was built by one of the
ancient race called the T’noohh, who flourished there from the 10th to the 17th century, and artists had been brought for the purpose from Constantinople; the symmetry of the masonry is admirable, and consequently the shadows formed from it are particularly straight and sharp in outline.
The village contains specimens of every form of religion to be found throughout the Lebanon; each sect, however, keeps somewhat apart from the rest, which practice being common in the mountain, may account for the villages appearing to a stranger to consist of separate pieces not quite joined together.
Some women still wear horns, although the Christian clergy set themselves strongly against these ornaments; some even refusing the Communion-Sacrament to those who persist in retaining that heathenish emblem derived from ancient mythology.
Among the Druse men, the ’Akâl are not so marked in their difference of costume from the Juhâl as formerly, except in the extreme cleanliness and careful plaiting of the white turban. My host, notwithstanding the antiquity of his family and his studious character, is not one of the initiated, he is but a Jâhel, yet he probably serves his people best in that capacity, as he is thereby enabled to hold government employments.