ranean. Here we make way for two camels. They deliberately bite into the leaves of the prickly-pear, and crush them in their mouths as though the thorny fruit was bread, caring as little for the terrible thorns as for the wind. I shuddered when I saw the fragments moving up and down in their mouths. A little after an hour's ride from Beirût,' the blue streak of the Mediterranean could be seen in a direction south-southwest; and in about half an hour we turn suddenly to the right, meeting the first olive-grove, of fourteen trees, near a little stream four or five inches deep and about three feet wide. This is our first rivulet; and, though dry in summer, it nevertheless bears a name just here quite common, pronounced Shwàyfert, though

1 Which we lost sight of fifty-five minutes after leaving the hotel.

120

MEANING OF LEBANON.

spelt Shuweifat on the map; the same name is given to the valley down which the rivulet runs, and to a village built on two ridges of the flank of Lebanon, nearly due east of us, and to the grove at the base of Lebanon, which is the largest olive-grove in Syria, nearly four miles long, so thickly planted that no ground can be seen between the trees at this distance. The pine and the olive are thus far the only trees which we have met, excepting a few of the singular kind of oak which we first saw in Beirût, and which averages in height about sixteen feet. It is an evergreen, bears leaves both broad and narrow on the same tree, the latter, when young, armed with small thorns, and the tree bearing an acorn of size and appearance as annexed.1

The Lebanon flanks generally present a gray appearance, from the want of verdure, and perhaps from the nature of the basis-rock, which is light-colored limestone; and hence, most probably, its title "Lebanon," "white," or "gray," is derived, more from the natural color than from the snows, which exist even in summer, and are brought to Damascus and other places to cool the wine and more necessary articles of diet; and, though the ther

1 Quercus Gallica,-called "ruffle-cup" acorn by the Franks.