Maronites over a dispute early in the thirteenth century; that it professes the Nestorian doctrine and claims descent from the stock of the original Mardaites; and that the schism led to its shutting itself up in its impregnable stronghold, until time wove over it the web of oblivion.

So we passed the greater part of the night, I beguiling myself with hopes that made me forget my folly in plunging into this peril without sufficient prepara-tion, guided by nothing but my trust in this stranger whom I had known for no more than a day. We kept pressing on until we came to a towering wall of rock, which I thought the furthest point a human foot could tread; but Jrous led me to a cave behind a thicket of brushwood and brambles, as though showing me a secret known to no creature but himself. He said: “Do you think anyone ever thought of sounding the depths of this cave, beyond its pitch darkness? No — but... yes, I recall just one man who went in and never came out. As for you, you have nothing to fear so long as you follow me. Give me your hand.”

I gave him my hand and went in behind him, from one narrow turning to another still narrower, blaming him — who knew all this — for not having warned me to bring my electric torch; whereupon he swore by Shamma's life that never in his life had he heard of the existence of that kind of lamp. Then he fell to telling me the tale of a man who had once made his way into Baakoura and had gone before Sheikh Nimrod's seat, where he delivered what news of Lebanon he could; the Sheikh dismissed him, feigning to wish him a safe return to his homeland — but the poor man had not reached a certain appointed spot outside the village before the cut-throats waylaid him and flung him into the Valley of Perdition.

After a walk of minutes that seemed to me longer than the Day of Judgment, the light of dawn appeared to us, and the opening of the cave on the far side gave onto a new, unknown world. I breathed a deep sigh of relief, drawing in with it a moist breeze that opened my chest; I could not tell whether

its wafts carried the scent of za'tar and broom, or some other fragrance holding the balm of life.

I stood dumbfounded, and my friend stood silent, so as not to spoil for me the effect of the first look.

In the middle of a basin no more than half a mile across, hemmed in by mountains on all four sides, stood a small hamlet of stone houses with flat earthen roofs like the old Lebanese houses, stretch-ing eastward to a high slope in which numerous hermitages had been hollowed out. I asked my companion whether these her-mitages were inhabited by monks, and he told me that most of the men turn to the life of asceticism in their early youth — one of the greatest causes of the scarcity of births, and perhaps part of the cause of the length of their lives. Yet the longevity of these men is as nothing beside what Sheikh Nimrod has attained, who, he told me, is directly linked to the ances-tor Enoch. I smiled at Jrous's exaggeration, and asked whether he too intended the monastic life; he sighed, and confessed to me for the first time that he meant to marry a girl named Shamma, and fell to describing her beauty, her bent for liberty, and her agree-ment with him in thought and temper. On this occasion he dis-closed to me something of a move-ment of liberation he was attempt-ing to carry out with Shamma — “a sister of men,” as he described her to me again and again — and with a number of the young men who had come to prefer a short and honored life to a long life of humiliation and submission.

A kind of rapture from that sweet air and enchanting view took hold of me. Jrous turned to me, reading what was passing in my mind, and said: “Beautiful, yes — but it is a stagnant beauty. The beauty of a pool whose waters have stood still and gone foul, fit now only as a dwelling for frogs and a watering place for vermin. In this village everything wholesome and desirable is forbidden, and everything hidden is permitted. The Sheikh forbids learning and social life, fearing for his own position — he kills them outright; likewise he tries to prevent the mingling of the sexes, and drink,

and smoking, but all of these are practiced in secret, for the forces of evil in man are stronger than the forces of good.”

Then he turned his face toward the towering wall through which we had entered, and said: “This stands between us and the world!”

I said, with disappointment in my voice: “This needs an effective government and powerful organi-zations to cut a road through it. Tomorrow — in the future, God willing.”

The young man felt the weakness that had come over me and said: “You have seen with your own eyes. I ask no more of you. Go back to Beirut, and write in the papers, and speak, and preach.”

What perplexity! Was it enough, after all my toil, that I had seen with my own eyes from afar, and carried away with me a blurred picture that looks like the likeness of any other village among the villages of Lebanon?

Jrous did not hide from me his fear that some harm might befall me, and that his own doings might be found out; he volunteered to accompany me out through the tunnel, but I proposed that he leave me to finish my adventure alone and go his own way as though he did not know me. I asked him, “What kind of weapons do you use?” He said: “We still use the tabanja, the ghaddara, and axes; but you have nothing to fear from these, for the Sheikh may well forbid their use against you, lest a stir be raised that would excite the curiosity of the people — and he knows, I think, that feeling is tense in his village. A single powder-shot might trouble the stillness of this valley, or begin a war between the soldiery and the people. I am sorry to say that at present the soldiery are the better prepared. And you have nothing to fear inside the village, so long as the Sheikh can get some profit out of you concerning the state of the world. The danger is on your way back: he does not want you to return to Beirut, so he will send his cut-throats to lie in wait for you in the narrow pass and fling you into the Valley of Perdition, where your traces will vanish from every eye and no room will be left for idle tales.” I looked