we should call good breeding, more particularly amongst the Akkals, would bear comparison with the most refined gentlemen of Europe; and their powers of observation and discrimination of character, are such as could only be expected amongst men of education and travel. This is the more wonderful, as except for an occasional short sojourn in the towns of Syria—St. Jean D’Acre, Tyre, Sidon, Beyrout, Latakia, or Damascus—no Druse ever leaves his native mountains; and beyond reading or writing their native tongue—the Arabic language, and even this until late years has been very partial indeed amongst them—they are destitute of any mental culture whatever.
The Druses marry but one wife; and their women, more particularly those of the higher classes, are kept very secluded indeed. However, although by no means common, divorce is very easy indeed amongst them. A man has but to say to his wife that she is free to return to her father’s house, and the divorce is as valid (nor can it be recalled if pronounced), as if in England it had been pronounced by the full Court of Divorce. Nor is it needful that any reason farther than that such is the husband’s will should be given for the act, and both parties are free to marry again. The married women wear the tanton, or horn, upon their heads, over which a veil is cast, the latter being drawn close round the face, and leaving only one eye exposed whenever a man of another creed or nation comes near; but those who have lived much in Lebanon, more particularly European ladies, have numerous opportunities of seeing the faces of all classes amongst them. Although by no means void of good looks when young, the women are not nearly so fine a race as the men; and the older females of the peasant classes are perhaps the most hideous old hags it is possible to conceive.
Amongst this strange people I spent nearly six months of the last summer and autumn, having for the health of my family taken up my residence at a village on Mount Lebanon, in the very centre of the Druse country. At an hour’s ride from where we lived was the village of Bisoor, inhabited by some sheiks, or chiefs, of the Talhook family, and amongst others by the sheik Talhook, who is certainly one of the most remarkable men I have met with in any country.
Sheik Bechir is an Akkal of the Druses, and perhaps there is not a stricter one throughout Lebanon. Throughout the mountain he has the reputation of dealing with magic; and certainly some of the cases of sickness he has cured, as well as the unaccountable tricks he has performed, go far to confirm the general opinion of his fellow-countrymen. An English gentleman, long resident in Lebanon, and in whose word the most implicit reliance can be placed, has told me that he has seen at the sheik’s bidding a stick proceed unaided by anything from one end of the room to another. Also, on two earthenware jars being placed in opposite corners of the room, one being filled with water and the other empty, the empty jar move across the room, the full jar rise and approach its companion, and empty its contents into it, the latter returning to its place in the way that it came. Of late years the sheik has given up these kind of performances, as he declares that the long fasts of fifteen and twenty days which were necessary, so he says, to prepare him and give him power over the spirits by which he worked, used to injure his health. So much is certain—on the testimony of some of the most respectable people in the mountain—that when he had to practise these magic arts continually, his health was very bad indeed, and that since he has given them up he has greatly improved.
Partly because of the ride from where I lived to Bisoor, but chiefly because I have a sort of decided inclination to cultivate singular acquaintances, I used often to go over last summer to see Sheik Bechir, and he frequently used to return my visit. At first he positively declined performing any of the tricks of which I had heard so much, declaring that, except to effect cures, he had made it a rule to have nothing more to do with the unseen world. However, after we had become more intimate, he one day consented to show me one of the tricks by which he used to astonish the mountaineers and others. He took a common water jar, and after mumbling certain incantations into the mouth of the vessels, placed it in the hands of two persons, selected from amongst the bystanders at hazard, sitting opposite to each other. For a time the jar did not move, the sheik going on all the time reciting very quickly what seemed to me verses from the Koran, and beating time, as it were, with his right hand upon the palm of his left. Still the vessel remained as it was placed, the sheik getting so vehement in his repetitions, and seemingly so anxious for the result, that although a cold day and a strong breeze was blowing into the divan where we sat, the perspiration flowed freely down his face and ran off his beard. At last the jar began to go round, first slowly, and then quicker, until it moved at quite a rapid pace, and made three or four evolutions. The sheik pointed to it as in triumph, and then stopped his recitations, when the jar stopped turning. After perhaps half a minute’s silence he began to recite again, and, wonderful to say, the jar began to turn again. At last he stopped, took the jar out of the hands of those who were holding it, and held it for an instant to my ear, when I could plainly hear a singing noise, as if of boiling water, inside. He then poured the water carefully out of it, muttered something more into its mouth, and gave it to the attendants to be refilled with water and placed where it had stood before, for any one wanting a drink to use. I should have premised that the jar was a common one, which, as is the custom in Syria, stood with others of the same kind near the door for any one to drink out of. When the performance was over, the sheik sank back, as if greatly exhausted, on the divan, and declared that it was the last time he would go through so much fatigue, or perform any more of his magic undertakings, except for the purpose of curing sick people, on any account whatever.
That the feat of making the water-jar turn was a very wonderful one there can be no doubt; nor could I account for it by any natural or ordinary means whatever. But how it was accomplished,