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A busy and enterprising landlord, he improved and added largely to his estates. His plantations extended over various tracts of waste land which he had purchased for a mere song, but which under his active superintendence became verdant and fruitful. In addition to these yearly increasing sources of income, he farmed largely in the Bekaa. His granaries were stored with the produce of more than twenty villages. By selling to the peasants in the Lebanon during the winter months when prices were high, he gradually realized an amount of wealth which enabled him to exercise that commanding influence which is the usual attendant on monied power.

The humble abode at Muctara now became a palace adorned with marble courts, and supplied with costly baths. A well constructed canal brought the waters of the river Barook from a distance of six hours to the very centre of his audience hall. Mills, gardens, orchards, arose on every side. A splendid hospitality made this luxuriant creation a focus of universal attraction. The name of the Sheik Bechir grew to be a passport throughout the land. From all parts his counsel was sought, his patronage demanded. That large party amongst the Druzes who rallied around him as the 'Jumblattery,' looked up to him with enthusiastic reverence. The Christians respected him for his tolerance, his charity, his good will, and courtesy. protected them from every species of insult or oppression. He subscribed towards the building of their churches. His chief secretaries and men of confidence were Christians. The Druzes and the Christians of all sects lived together under his paternal sway like members of one family. A Druze in those days passing over into the purely Maronite districts, was welcomed and entertained with the utmost cordiality. A Maronite coming into the Druze districts was received in like manner. Religious feuds and political disputes were never heard of amongst them. Nor did these happy relations

He

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cease to exist until both sects were, in 1840, by the intervention of England, placed under the blasting and curse-bearing dominion of the Ottoman Turks, who immediately began the diabolical policy of exciting one against the other, that by means of the exhaustion induced by the internecine struggle, they might ultimately establish their corrupt and selfish rule over both. And thus it is not too much to say that the Ottoman Turks are the direct authors, instigators, and executors of all the miseries, horrors, and massacres which have desolated and depopulated the Lebanon for the last twenty years.

The conduct of the Sheik Bechir towards the Christians is one instance out of many others which might be adduced that a generous regard and friendly bearing towards Christianity is not inconsistent with a profession of Islamism. For the Sheik Bechir was a strict Mussulman. He built a mosque at Muctara from whose lofty minarets the muezzin's cry, even now at stated intervals goes forth to call the faithful to prayer; and though there are none to respond, yet the semblance is in this manner (as a mere matter of routine and almost involuntarily) kept up, of adhesion to a creed which, without having absolutely abjured, the Jumblatts of the present day have virtually abandoned. At the same time, they never have been, nor are they, Druzes. Not one of their family was ever known to be an Ockal. They are Druzes simply because they live amongst the Druzes, and choose to call themselves Druzes. In fact, in that respect they are neither better nor worse than the great class of the 'uninitiated,' who are to all intents and purposes infidels.

The sway which the Sheik Bechir maintained in that somewhat heterogeneous and turbulent body politic, presided over by his contemporary the Emir Bechir Shehaab, was in conformity with his influence and position. For twenty years he was the friend and confidant, the colleague and adviser, of that remarkable ruler of the Lebanon;

and never did the Lebanon enjoy greater tranquillity, or more happiness and security, than under their joint administration. Unfortunately, a quarrel between the Pashas of Acre and Damascus was the indirect cause of a cessation of this long protracted and apparently indissoluble friendship. Contrary to the advice of the Sheik, the Emir Bechir had determined to join in the dispute by giving his support to Abdallah, the Pasha of Acre, to whom he felt himself bound by ties of gratitude for his generosity and general display of favour. The course of events ere long showed the justice of the warning. The adverse party prevailing, and disaffection arising in his own camp, the Emir Bechir found himself in such irremediable difficulties as to render his position extremely precarious. Under these circumstances the Sheik Bechir proposed that the Emir should withdraw, at least for a time, from the scene of action, and that he should be replaced by two Emirs of his own family. The Emir, unable to counteract or to oppose such a decision emanating from such a quarter, at once left the Lebanon, and fled to Egypt.

This conduct on the part of the Sheik Bechir, the Emir strongly resented as a foul abandonment of his cause. It cannot therefore be wondered at that the Emir, on his return from exile some months afterwards, strengthened by the assistance and prestige of Mehemet Ali, sent for the Sheik to come from Muctara to Ebtedeen, and told him that his political duties were thenceforward to be confined to his own particular feudal district. Though thus unceremoniously deprived of his wonted share in the administration of the Lebanon, the Sheik kissed the Emir's hands, only begged for a continuance of their former friendship, and withdrew. A few days afterwards the Emir wrote to him for five hundred purses, or £2500, a large sum in those days. The demand was complied with. Presently it was repeated. The Sheik Bechir perceiving that the Emir had resolved to persecute and ruin him, fled. A

large party of Christian Emirs and Druze Sheiks rallied round him, and a civil war became imminent. A reconciliation, however, was effected, and the Sheik Bechir appeared once again, and for the last time, at Ebtedeen. It was not long before the Emir Bechir again demanded the pecuniary contribution which he had already attempted to levy on the Sheik, and the latter in consequence was once more compelled to leave Muctara, and took refuge with Mustapha Pasha, of Tripoli.

The whole of the Lebanon was soon in commotion. The Emir was making the most oppressive exactions in every direction, and all eyes were turned to the Sheik Bechir as to a common deliverer. Unable to resist the general appeal, he issued forth from his retreat and took command of the insurgents. So cordial and rapid was the gathering of the mountaineers that in a few days the forces assembled at and about Muctara, amounted to nearly twenty thonsand men. Notwithstanding the severity of the season, for all these movements took place in the depth of winter, and a winter of such severity that the snow lay on the masts of vessels in the harbour of Beyrout, the Sheik Bechir hoped by an immediate advance to strike a decisive blow. On February 26, 1824, he marched against his great rival. His advanced posts absolutely succeeded in surrounding Ebtedeen and firing into its very courts. Everything seemed to promise the most splendid success. The Emir, not crediting the possibility of such a demonstration, had taken little or no pains to gather partisans or strengthen his cause. He had barely a few hundred men with him, and was only deterred from flight by the earnest entreaties of some Druze Sheiks who were about his person. A sortie was made, headed by the latter, but with little or no success.

At this critical juncture, when the fortunes of the Emir were to all appearances hopelessly ruined, a considerable body of cavalry, with two pieces of cannon, a re

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inforcement sent to the Emir by Abdallah Pasha, emerged from the mountains in the direction of Sidon, and fell upon the left flank of the Sheik Bechir's position. The sudden appearance of this force, augmented by the effects of imagination, created a panic throughout the Sheik's army, and in a few minutes the rout became general, all retreating in the direction of Muctara. The next day the Sheik Bechir was a fugitive on his way to the Houran. Scarcely had he reached that asylum for political delinquents, ere he was surprised and made prisoner by some Turkish irregular cavalry sent in his pursuit. He was immediately taken to Acre, where his reception by Abdallah Pasha was at first not unfavourable. A stringent order, however, soon after reached the latter from Mehemet Ali (one obtained at the earnest solicitation of the Emir Bechir) which sealed his fate, and he was bow-strung.

He left three sons of tender age, Nohman, Said, and Ismail. Ön their father's defeat they had been taken by their mother to Damascus, where for the space of five years they enjoyed the hospitality of a respectable Mohammedan citizen of the name of Shumalli. On the advance of Ibrahim Pasha to Damascus in 1831, they left that city with the retreating Turkish army, and accompanied it to Aleppo. Nohman, who was now about fifteen years of age, here left his mother and brothers and went to Constantinople, where he sought and procured the kind offices of Achmet Pasha, the Grand Admiral, and through whose interest he obtained a pension of £60 a month from the Turkish Government. In 1839, on his patron's taking the extraordinary step of deserting with the whole of the Turkish fleet to Mehemet Ali, Nohman determined on following his fortunes, and made his way to Alexandria. The Viceroy gave him a most flattering reception, and conferred on him the rank and decoration of a Bey in the Egyptian army. At the close of the ensuing year he was sent, together with some other

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Druze Sheiks who had for years past been_hangers-on at Cairo, to rally the Druzes round the Egyptian standard, in that last and futile attempt of their Protector to maintain his footing in Syria, which occasioned the Allied operations of 1840.

Said and Ismail, after two years' residence with their mother at Aleppo, were summoned by the Emir Bechir to Ebtedeen, whither they repaired in the autumn of 1833. Said was sent forthwith to Alexandria, where he entered the Egyptian service with the rank of captain. In the year 1835 he accompanied a reinforcement sent to Syria by sea, landed at Suadea, and joined the head quarters of Ibrahim Pasha at Aleppo. He took part in the campaigns against the Turks of 1836 and 1837, and was present at the battle of Nezib. Amongst the incidents of his military career, he was stationed once with his company at an outpost in the defiles of the Taurus, where he and his men were reduced to such extremities of hunger, having been left three whole days and nights without any provisions, that they were obliged, in order to sustain life, to boil and eat their own shoes. On the general disorganization and disruption of the Egyptian Government in Syria, in 1841, and when, in the midst of winter, Ibrahim Pasha commenced his disastrous retreat from Damascus, his soldiers falling out and deserting by thousands, Sheik Said contrived also to make his escape and gave himself up to the Turkish commander-inchief, at Hasbeya, in the AntiLebanon. He accompanied the Turkish army in its march to Jaffa, and there met and embraced his brother Nohman, who had also surrendered, after a separation of seventeen years.

On the pacification which now ensued, the two brothers, joined on their road by Ismail, who had been brought up by the Emir Bechir, returned to Muctara, which they found in a state of complete ruin and desolation, the Emir Bechir having long ago razed the fine old family serail to the ground,

and appropriated all its choice marbles and exquisite mosaics for the embellishment of his own palace at Ebtedeen.

An event now occurred highly characteristic of a feudal régime. Sheiks Nejm and Haleel Jumblatt asserted their claims to a share in the administration of the Jumblatt district. As this had hitherto been exclusively in the hands of their father the Sheik Bechir and of his immediate ancestors, the other members of the house of Jumblatt living merely as landed proprietors, Nohman Bey and Sheik Said resisted this claim on the part of their cousins as unwarrantable and presumptuous. Both parties had their partisans, and an appeal to arms was apparently unavoidable. In this dilemma Sheik Said suggested an easy solution of the difficultythat of assassination. Nohman was loth at first to have recourse to this summary expedient, but the danger was imminent. Delay or weakness on their parts might expose them to an attack of which the results were doubtful, and subject them to the risk of losing a position which they felt belonged to them by hereditary descent. The two aspiring Sheiks were accordingly invited to take coffee with them under the pretence of effecting a satisfactory arrangement and reconciliation, and while partaking of this treacherous hospitality, were both shot dead. Their followers fired a few shots, but as their chiefs were gone, the inutility of a struggle which could not benefit them was manifest, and in a few hours all commotion subsided, and Nohman, Said, and Ismail were left in undisturbed possession of their ancestral rights.

Scarcely had they begun the work of rebuilding and repairing their crumbling and dismantled palace, ere the disastrous civil war of 1841 broke out between the Druzes and Christians. Nohman Bey, as far as he could, enacted the part of a mediator between the combatants, and did his best to prevent the effusion of blood and the prolongation of hostilities.

Sheik Said, on the contrary, now in his twentieth year, plunged ardently into the struggle. Though never showing signs of individual bravery, or in any way exposing his person more than was absolutely necessary, yet he exhibited the ferocity of his disposition and his innate hatred to the Christians, by massacring three hundred of them, men, women, and children indiscriminately, in the village of Sugbeen: a fact painfully recorded in the English consular despatches from Syria of that period.

On the appointment of Omar Pasha to be Governor of the Lebanon in 1842, Nohman Bey at once withdrew from all participation in public affairs. With a singular degree of foresight he depicted, almost as if they had already occurred, all the evils and baneful consequences which would assuredly follow on the advent of the Ottoman Turks to equivocal power in his native mountains. He had already excited their jealousy for having allowed his brother Ismail to be sent to England for his education; inasmuch as this pledge which he had voluntarily given of his admiration of and confidence in the English, had been construed, perhaps not without reason, into a desire on his part to place his family interests under English protection. He saw the intention of the European Governments to exercise what they hoped would be a beneficial influence over the administration of the Lebanon, and he knew that such an attempt would be useless, such expectations utterly vain. He often declared that the Ottoman Turks would infallibly use every means that art and intrigue could suggest to neutralize a supervision which, in their haughty and domineering pride, they regarded as an unjustifiable intrusion on their rights; and he felt that under such circumstances he should be fettered in his action as a feudal chief, and be rendered incapable of giving satisfaction to either party. If he strove to keep well in with the Turks, he should have to run counter to the humane policy of the Franks; while if he

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tried to please the Franks, he should incur the hatred and distrust of the Turks. It was with great difficulty, however, that the Druzes, amongst whom he was remarkably popular, would hear of his leaving Muctara, and it was only by pretending to become an Ockal—assuming the white turban and leaving off smoking, as tokens of his resolution that he was enabled to accomplish his purpose and enjoy his retreat.

The fate of Ismail was sufficiently melancholy. The novelty, the bustle, and the changes of English life, the wondrous scenes which suddenly burst on his untutored mind, and as a climax, the charms of a beautiful English lady, of whom he became desperately enamoured, with the additional pang of knowing the fruitlessness of his love, all combined to unsettle his reason, and he gradually fell into a state of idiotic despondency. After little more than a year's absence he returned to the Lebanon a confirmed lunatic; used at times to rush out of his room and scale the mountains around Muctara barefooted and almost naked; was finally thrown into chains by his brother Said, and died in that deplorable condition about two years

ago.

Omar Pasha soon gave the Druzes a taste of Turkish diplomacy. Treacherously inviting some of their most influential sheiks to a repast, he suddenly surrounded them, imprisoned them, and sent them town under a guard to Beyrout. Sheik Said was amongst the number. After a short interval he was released, on his solemn promise and engagement that he would do all in his power to persuade the Druze commonalty, outraged and menacing revolt at the seizure and detention of their sheiks, to return to obedience. He proceeded direct to Muctara, and signalized his sincerity by forthwith joining the Druze bands under their famous chief, Chibli Arrian. He shared in the ignominious defeat which overtook this futile attempt at insurrection, and fled, together with the numerous Druze sheiks who were in

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volved in the disaster, to the Houran. There he remained for nearly two years, and only obtained leave from the Porte to return home through the friendly intercession of Colonel (now Sir Hugh) Rose, at the time her Majesty's Consul-General for Syria.

Nohman Bey, though he had waived the exercise of his feudal rights, strenuously asserted his claims, in conformity with general usage, to his share in the family property. This was sternly denied him. It would be invidious to state from what quarter a decision so contrary to all precedent emanated; and the circumstance is only alluded to inasmuch as the consequences which ensued from it forcibly illustrate the shortsightedness and inefficiency generally attaching to procedures which sacrifice justice and right to political expediency. It was considered to be of great importance to English interests that the wealth, power, and influence of the Jumblatts should be concentrated in one hand. But the Jumblatts are not the Druzes, though they form by their connexions an important section of the Druzes: and this same endeavour to prop up a single family, and this determination to give it an exclusive protection, diminished the very influence it was intended to enlarge, by exciting the jealousy of other Druze sheiks, men also of wealth and feudal array, who were offended at such a tacit insinuation of their insignificance, and who recompensed themselves by placing themselves under the protection of the French. As it was, Nohman Bey was compelled to accept a pension from his brother of twentyfive pounds a month; and Sheik Said, who now adopted the selfassumed title of Bey, was put into exclusive possession of the Jumblatt estates, yielding a revenue of £8000 a-year.

Said Bey now succeeded to the position of his father, the Sheik Bechir, and the Divan at Muctara, after a suspension of twenty years, again become a power. Three months before the breaking out of the civil war in the Lebanon in