November the 9th, as soon as it was light, the muleteers re-appeared, confessing that they had hidden themselves for fear of being employed through the night. We departed from Ayn Aty, clambering up the steep paths to surmount the second chain; and, in about two hours, we came to the summit, from which the valley of the Bkâ, as we looked down behind us, seemed like a slip of fallow land, so much were its dimensions narrowed by distance. In ascending Mount Lebanon, from the plain between Dayr Ahmar and the spring Ayn Aty, the rock is of a compact limestone, with a portion of iron intermixed: at least, so I judged from its colour, which was, where exposed to the air, red, and within flesh-coloured. On the very summit of the mountain, above the Cedars and behind the village of Bsharry, I broke off a fragment of rock, which was limestone also. Descending on the other side, we saw the far-famed clump of Cedars on our right; and, leaving them, arrived at sunset at Bsharry. The shaykh, named Ragel, received Lady Hester into his house, although he had made some difficulty at first, owing to his dread of the plague, which we might have brought with us from Bâlbec. I was lodged in a house on the opposite side of the street, and the rest were dispersed about as the shaykh chose to billet them.
Bsharry is in itself a picturesque spot, and commands views of other spots equally so. It was a burgh of two hundred houses, furnishing when necessary five hundred muskets. From the martial character of the inhabitants, who were hardy mountaineers, and accustomed from their infancy to carry fire-arms; as also from its elevated situation, difficult on all sides of access; it had, at different periods, asserted its independence by force, although surrounded by Drûzes and Metoualys, Turks, and Ansárys. They spoke of the present government of the Emir Beshýr with disgust, and pretended that, if the love of liberty, which was so strong in their forefathers, had still existed, they should yet have been free.
In the environs of Bsharry, potatoes were cultivated and eaten by the peasants as an article of daily food. Their introduction was of a few years’ date only. Some Franks at Tripoli, I afterwards learned, were accustomed to eat them occasionally; but elsewhere than at Bsharry I did not observe them to be cultivated. Lady Hester caused some to be planted at Abra, but the peasants prognosticated that they would die; and indeed they came up very well, but the soil was too much burnt up, and they could not find moisture enough to come to maturity.
The inhabitants of Bsharry were of the Maronite persuasion. They were said to be all good sportsmen. I found few sick in the place, and was told that persons lived to an advanced age. Among those who applied to me there were cases of colic, sore eyes, and old sores, and one of a venereal nature; but there were no goitres, and yet snow-water is the only water drunk. I collected here a few ancient coins, which was generally the payment I exacted from the sick. The river Kadýshy takes its source above this village, out of a rocky amphitheatre, and is precipitated by small cascades into a deep ravine, where it runs until lost among the windings of the mountains.
To the north-east another spring, from the mountains that overhang the environs of the village, fell in a pretty cascade, and, running close to the east point of the village, contributed to increase the stream of the Kadýsha. The water, where it formed the cascade, and before it mixed with other rivulets, was said to affect goats, drinking of it, with looseness; whilst men were exempt from this effect. The roads around were stony and difficult, rendered wet and muddy by the constant intersection of rivulets, which, at this season, were very numerous. To the east of Bsharry there is a convent dedicated to Mar Serkýz.
The women here, instead of veils of silk crape, wore over their heads coloured handkerchiefs, principally red. The tassy on the head was of the shape of a truncated bell of silver, to which were appended by the better sort of females jingling gold and silver coins, to divert (as a lively young woman told me) their tiresome husbands. Their pantaloons were red; and, from the frequent resort of Tripoline ladies to these heights for change of air, they had adopted from them the high-heeled slipper with red soles, affected by the Christian women of that city, and by them borrowed from the Cypriotes.
In the same house with the shaykh lodged another shaykh of the same family, named Girius, a man of better appearance than his colleague. Seeing that I inquired for antiques, he produced an intaglio, representing an owl, for which I offered him a considerable price; but he was quite exorbitant in his demands. I had every reason to believe, from what I afterwards heard at Tripoli, that this ring had once been the property of an Englishman, Mr. Davison, who, on visiting the Cedars of Mount Lebanon, lost it in the snow. It was picked up by a man sent by the shaykh to look for it, after Mr. Davison had employed a peasant in (as he said) a fruitless search for it and had departed.
We staid here the whole of the 10th, but Lady Hester did not show herself out of doors, nor admit the females of the house into her room; and from this circumstance originated a report, which was circulated at Tripoli before our arrival, that she had guards to prevent people from gazing on her as she passed along the road.
From Bsharry[13] we proceeded to Ehden. The rainy season was now set in, and the weather was exceedingly cold in these high regions. Eden, or, as it is more properly written, Ehden, has been fancifully supposed by some travellers to be the ancient Paradise; but it has no claim whatever to such a pre-eminence, excepting in name, as there are many villages in the mountain equally, or even more, romantic. Its elevated situation renders it a pleasant summer residence, and the Franks of Tripoli resort to it annually in the hot months. In their eyes and those of the native Christians, it is no small recommendation to these almost inaccessible spots, that they live here quite away from the Turks, whose gravity and sobriety in the cities greatly repress their conviviality. Ehden abounds in lofty and spreading walnut-trees and mulberry plantations. Meandering rivulets purl through it in every direction. The cottages are substantially and neatly built, and we were nowhere more pleasantly lodged during the journey than here. The curate’s widow gave up her best room for me. It was a stone-walled house, with a flat roof and a floor of compact cement. The windows were without casements. The whole village was much more neatly built than any of those that we had hitherto seen.
There was a man in this village named Yusef Kawàm, who afforded much amusement. He might be said to officiate in the capacity of parasite to anybody who visited Ehden, and who would pay him for playing the character.