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CHAPTER XXI THE CHARM BROKEN My restoration to civilisation was, however, only gradual. By sunrise we were at Tripoli, where we lay for a few hours. By eleven we were at Beyrout. Here I went ashore with a young rogue of an Arab for an interpreter, and drove into the country amongst blue and scarlet anemones, to an old castle on one of the spurs of Lebanon. Below it was a valley full of vineyards and fountains, and under a fig-tree at the door of a small tavern I took a draught of the delicious wine of the country, which shone in the glass with the tint of a blood-orange. The whole of the following day we lay off Jaffa. My two fellow-passengers had disappeared at Beyrout, so I was left completely to myself to kill time as I might by alternately reading some numbers of 'Le Monde Illustré ' and looking over the bulwarks in the direction of Jerusalem. To me the prospect seemed full of an indescribable desolation and desertion. I knew that in a certain sense this impression is not

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