Upward and onward our road led past this
once populous, but now burnt-down, village of
Brumana. Like every other Christian village
throughout this district, it was wealthy and
flourishing three months before the period we
passed it—had its harvests of oil, grapes, and
silk— but was in May last burnt to the ground
by the Druses, and the inhabitants—those who
were not murdered—turned out as beggars to
starve and die, as they most certainly would
have done were it not for the help afforded them
by the munificent charity of England, which, in
the course of about six months, sent nearly
fifty thousand pounds in money and clothes to
the unfortunate population of Lebanon. Yet
let us not blame the Druses too severely.
Savage and bloodthirsty as they were against
the Christians, and fearful as were the wholesale
massacres they committed, they were but
the instruments of the Turkish government in
a most fiendish plot to trample out the whole
Christian element in Syria. This is the opinion
of every one, whatever be his country or creed,
who happened to be in Syria during the summer
of 1860, a season long to be remembered in the
annals of crime. Regarding the respective
culpability of the Druses or Christians in the mere
civil war, there may and does exist considerable
difference of opinion, but I never heard but the
one verdict pronounced about the Turkish
authorities, which was that they were the
instigators, aiders, and abettors of the massacres;
using the Druses as instruments with which to
exterminate the whole Christian population in
Lebanon. This idea is greatly if not altogether
confirmed by three circumstances, to the truth
of both of which I can bear witness. Throughout
the horrors which the Druses committed in the
mountain, they were firmly impressed with the
conviction that, in slaying right and left every
male amongst the Christians, they were but
obeying the orders of the Sultan. The second
is, that in no single village or town where the
massacres took place, did the Turkish authorities
or Turkish troops in any way try to
prevent them. The former looked on with
approval; the latter not only joined the Druses,
but were so much more infamous that they
dishonoured the Christian women, whom the
Druses respected. The third circumstance is
that in no part of the Mountain did these cold-
blooded wholesale massacres of unarmed men
take place, except where there were Turkish
authorities and Turkish troops. I do not speak of
the mere civil war, where Druses shot down
Maronites and Maronites killed Druses; each
party burning the villages of the other as they
obtained the mastery for the moment. This
savage system of warfare is unfortunately the
custom of the country, and I fear will be so for
years to come. But the deliberate
wholesale butchery of hundreds of unarmed men— the
slaying of their fellow-creatures until the very
"rivulets of the streets flowed in blood,"*—
such as happened at Dheir-el-Kammar,
Hashbeiya, Rasheia, Jezzin, and under the walls of
Sidon: horrors like these nerer happened in
any previous civil war in Lebanon, and only
happened this time in such places as there were
a Turkish garrison and Turkish authorities. Be
it, moreover, remembered that, although these
massacres were perpetrated in the month of
June, not a single Druse, nor a single Turkish
officer nor soldier, was arraigned or punished
for several months afterwards.

* The words of a poor woman whose husband and
five sons were butchered before her eyes at Dheir-
el-Kammar, when relating the details of the
massacre to the writer.

Leaving Brumana to our right and below us,
we crossed the top of the first ridge of Lebanon;
and, on the table-land above, as we moved for
a time over level ground and under a magnificent
forest of pines, the splendid view of the
valley of the Meten burst upon us, running
right away to the foot of the Kuneiseh range;
the peaks of which are not more than two or
three months without snow throughout the
year. Far on, at the head of the valley, is
the castle and village of Corneille, celebrated
as one of the scenes in the romance of " Conrad,"
whilst nearer, but on the opposite side of the
valley, is the castle and village of Soleima, both
of which belong to Christian emirs of the mountain,
but both of which were burnt down during
the civil war of 1845 between the Druses and
Maronites. As we halted our horses on the
table-land at the entrance of the valley, I
counted, with the aid of my little telescope, no
less than sixteen large-sized villages, and more
than twenty churches, burnt to the ground, and
without a living soul amongst them. In a
former journey I had seen this same valley of
the Meten alive with an industrious thriving
population. The last time I was here, on my
road to visit the Emir Moussa (since dead)
and the convent Mar Hanna,* the whole
country was thickly peopled. I remember it
was a fete day. In every village the church
bells were ringing the congregations to mass,
and every half-mile, or oftener, we met groups of
well-dressed, well-mounted emirs, sheiks, or
peasants, on their way to worship. What
change had been wrought in the laud by the
late civil war! Far and near, as distant as the
eye could see, even by the help of an excellent
glass, not a soul was visible throughout this vast
valley.

*See  Coffee and Pipes, vol. xviii. p. 447 of
Household Words.

A little further on, our road led again
down hill. Formerly, we should have met or
have overtaken every five minutes laden animals
going to or coming from Beyrout, on their
way to or from the various villages in the district.
This time not a man or beast did we  .
see until we reached the very bottom of the
ravine, where we fell in with three Druse horsemen,
who were watering their horses at the
fountain, and who, as we stopped to let our
animals drink, commenced asking us the news from
Beyrout, what ships of war had come into the
harbour; what about the French?

After leaving the bed of the river at the foot
of the ravine, we turned sharp round to the