stronghold is in the Kesrouan district of the
mountain; although they are also to be found
in greater or less numbers in every region
and in almost every village. This people
has always looked upon France as the nation
to which it must look for protection, and has
an indistinct notion that some day or other
France will rule over Lebanon. So long ago
as during the reign of Henry the Fourth of
France, the title of Protector of the Christians
of Mount Lebanon, was given to the French
King by the Sultan Solyman the Second.
The Maronites are far from having any
reason to complain of persecution from the
Turkish rulers of the country. They enjoy
complete religious liberty. They are also
exempt from conscription for the army,
and the miri, or tax, which they have
to pay, is collected by their own chiefs, who
are again responsible to the Christian
Governor of Lebanon. In fact, the only
persecutions of which this people can with any
justice complain, are those which they suffer
from their own priests, bishops, emirs, and
sheiks.

In temporal, as well as spiritual matters,
the Maronites are, perhaps, the most
priestridden race in the whole world. No
peasant, nor even sheik, or emir, dares to
marry without the permission of his clerical
director. The sums paid to the priests,
bishops, monks, and other ecclesiastics, for
masses, confession, burials, marriages, and
other rites of the church, exceed one third of
the annual income of the people. So wealthy
are the convents that fully one third of the
cultivated land of Lebanon belongs to them,
and they are adding yearly to their already
vast possessions.

When a sheik, emir, or wealthy peasant
dies, he usually leaves—no matter how many
children he may have to provide for—a
fourth, and oftentimes a third, of his land to
the church. The monks themselves, however,
do not live in comfort, although in the class
of life from which they are nearly all taken—
that of the labouring peasantry—they, no
doubt, find luxuries in what we should term
the bare necessaries of life. They cultivate
their lands well, and it is to the example set
by them that the cultivation of the
mulberry-tree, and the quantity of silk
produced in the mountain, has so greatly
increased of late years.

Among the Maronites there are two classes
of feudal nobility—emirs and sheiks.
Whenever a Maronite mountaineer happens to
meet an emir he stoops to kiss his hands.
The emirs, or princes, are numerous; but few
of them are wealthy. Some are so poor as
to be in actual want. In former times these
persons possessed nearly all the land in the
mountain; but they have been impoverished
by two or three centuries of partisan-fighting
amongst themselves, together with the
maintenance of crowds of useless retainers, the
incurring of debts at heavy interest with
money lenders in the towns, and huge
donations of lands to the church.

There are some exceptions to this rule,
and several amongst the emirs have retained
a large part of their lands, which they are
cultivating in a very creditable manner. The
great hold of the priests over these princes,
is gradually but surely giving way. Even the
monks themselves admit this, and attribute it
—not without reason—to the extension of
education by the American Protestant
Missionaries on Lebanon, and to the number of
books and tracts which are now published
in Arabic, by the press in Beyrout, belonging
to their mission. To this day, however, the
emirs maintain much of their old exclusiveness;
and, on no account, would even the
poorest amongst them either marry or allow
his sons, daughters, brothers or sisters to
marry out of his own rank. However poor
an emir may be, the peasantry of the village
in which he resides bring him offerings of
fowls, sugar, coffee, and other mountain
luxuries on the great holidays of the church,
and pay him quite as much respect as if he
were still possessor of vast lands. Some few
of the most indigent are said to subsist
entirely on these presents. But however
destitute he maybe, no emir ever for a
moment thinks of turning his hand to a trade of
any kind. Even the higher ranks of
commerce he avoids as a pollution to his
dignity.

It is not so with the sheiks, who form the
second class among the Maronite nobility.
These also intermarry with each other's
families, and receive great respect from the
fellahs, or peasants. Many of them, however,
engage in trade, and one family of sheiks has,
for many years, had houses of business in
London and Marseilles, which, until the crisis
of eighteen hundred and fifty-seven, were
accounted wealthy. The very great majority
of the sheiks, however, reside always in
Lebanon, and are engaged in the cultivation
of their lands. Some of these men are very
troublesome, and pass their lives in feudal or
family quarrels, which are only mitigated by
the intervention of the Patriarch.

A few days before our arrival at B'kerke,
there had been a very serious disturbance in
the neighbourhood. The cause of the quarrel
had been a disputed right to a certain well to
which two families of sheiks laid claim. A
frail peace had been patched up between the
belligerents, but not until there had been
much bloodshed.

Although devoted sons of Rome and of
their own church, the Maronites—and
particularly the sheiks—sometimes break out in
rebellion against their spiritual heads. Thus
the rule, when a bishop dies, is that the
priests of the diocese present to the Patriarch
the names of three of their number, from
which one is selected for the vacant bishopric,
In some districts, however, where particular
families have a commanding influence, the