right, and commenced the ascent of the opposite
side of the mountain, rounding at the same time
a long spur of this range of Lebanon, and opening
out another and a totally different view of
the magnificent and ever-changing panorama of
these hills and valleys. Our road led right
through the very middle of three burnt-down
Christian villages, with their churches in ruins
and their houses roofless. Not a living soul
was to be seen in any one of these hamlets. At
last a sharp turn in the pathway brought us in full
sight and close to the silk factory, which, standing
in the middle of its well-cultivated grounds,
and with unmistakable signs of civilisation and
industry around it, was a very great relief after
the scenes of spoliation and burning we had
passed through. A large iron gate—most
unmistakably French, and exactly like what is to
be seen at the entrance of every factory near
Lyons and Mulhouse —admitted us into a long
wide avenue, leading up to the commodious
dwelling-house of the proprietor, and in a very
few minutes we had dismounted from our horses,
and were shaking our host by the hand, not
sorry to have brought ourselves in safety over a
nearly six hours' ride of the Lebanon roads.

According to universal custom in the East,
whether amongst natives or Europeans, we were
first taken into the drawing-room, and offered
cool sherbet, with black coffee, and a half-
hour's smoke. In Lebanon, and throughout
Syria, travellers are not supposed to burden
themselves with dress clothes, and our toilets
merely consisted in a hearty ablution of hands
and face, and the substitution of easy-fitting
shoes for our long riding-boots. By this time
the dinner bell rang, and we followed the
servant to the dining-room, where the whole of
the Europeans connected with the establishment
were assembled for the evening meal. The party
was not a small one, for our host maintains the
good old-fashioned system of all his French
subordinates dining with himself at the same table.

Early the next morning we turned out for a
walk round the grounds, and an inspection ot
the factory. Monsieur M. is now the
principal owner of a splendid silk-reeling factory,
working a hundred and thirty wheels, and
employing altogether nearly two hundred persons.
The silk of Ein-Hamade is well known and
highly valued in the Marseilles and Lyons
markets, owing to the excellence of the machinery
used, and the careful superintendence of the
reelers by Frenchwomen, who have themselves
been brought up to the trade of silk reeling in
their own country. This was the chief secret
of Monsieur M.'s success. He and all his
family for several generations have been silk
reelers in the town or neighbourhood o
Ganges, near Montpellier. All the French
employes at the Ein-Hamade factory are, like
the proprietor, from Ganges, and, like him
they are all Protestants, most of them having,
as they told me, members of their families
who fled to England after the revocation of
the Edict of Nantes. These circumstances give
a sort of family feeling, or esprit de corps,
amongst Monsieur M.'s subordinates, which
must help him greatly in his business; for,
although only salaried assistants, it was very
evident that each one of them took a personal
interest in the welfare of the establishment, and
great pride in the quality of the silk it produces.

Walking through the great reeling rooms of
the factory, it was pleasant to see the good
ventilation, cleanness, and order everywhere
apparent, and still more so to observe the healthy
looks of the factory girls. The latter are all
natives of the neighbouring villages, or rather
of the villages which existed before the late
civil war. In the immediate neighbourhood of
Ein-Hamade the Druses and Christians fought;
the former, being supported and helped by the
Turkish government, got the upper hand, and
as they burnt all the Christian villages, the
inhabitants of them had to fly to Beyrout or Sidon.
As a matter of course this stopped entirely the
working of the silk factories in Lebanon, that
of Ein-Hamade included. After a short time,
however, many of the Christians whose children
had employment in this establishment before the
outbreak, returned to the place, and they have
all been housed by Monsieur M. in the various
cottages on his property. What between his
factory girls, their relatives, and refugee Christians
from the various villages, our host, when
we visited the place, was feeding daily, at his
own expense, about five hundred persons, of
whom nearly three hundred were sick from
exposure and want, after losing their houses
and all they had. One large village, barely
a gunshot from the factory, was burnt down
by the Druses, but although a large body of
the latter threatened one day to set fire to
the whole establishment unless Monsieur M.
delivered up to them some three hundred
Christians who had taken refuge within his
walls, they ended by going away and not carrying
their threats into execution.

The silk-reeling business in Lebanon is not
only very extensive, but is every year increasing
greatly, both in quantity and quality of the
produce, although no doubt the late civil war
will injure it for the next year or two. Even
with the suicidal export duty of fifteen per cent
which the Turkish government imposes on all
exported produce, the quantity of silk
produced in Lebanon alone has quite doubled,
and has nearly quadrupled in value, during
the last ten years. The reason for the former
increase is the vast quantities of land which the
sheiks and peasants—Druse as well as Christian
seeing how greatly it is their interest to do so—
have recovered from utter unproductiveness and
planted with mulberry-trees. The cause of the
vast increase in value is owing to the introdution
of European-fashioned machinery in the
reeling, and thus producing a much finer quality
of silk, which is all shipped for the Lyons
market.

There are only four or five large silk
manufactories like that of Ein-Hamade in the
Lebanon, one of which belongs to an Englishman,
the rest to French firms. But in the