The Khûri, was a native, and his robes could not well have been dirtier or shabbier. He was accompanied by two acolytes who held our horses; his pride and satisfaction in showing his church were immense.
Whilst at Jenîn we had the unusual honour of a visit from a lady, who came to ask for medical advice. Peasants suffering from ophthalmia, or from indigestion, which they explained by saying "the head of my heart hurts me,â we had to doctor every day, and one poor old gentleman, at Mujeidil, we afterwards treated with carbolic acid and nearly cured of a skin disease; but he had many other ailments which we could not treat, and he consequently became a decided nuisance. The lady came attended by her slave, a little girl in white with large dark eyes, one of which, for some unknown reason, she kept steadily shut. The mistress was dressed in yellow and white striped cotton, with the izâr or white veil above; her face-veil she was obliged to remove to show her tongue, and her eyes had a deep fringe of blue kohel all round, the eyebrows painted to meet, whilst on her chin, forehead, and upper lip, were small dots tattooed in blue in a sort of trefoil pattern; her hands had bands of blue paint and dots on the knuckles. She wore heavy rings and a blue glass bracelet; the sleeves were tight to the wrist, and under her frock she wore the gay-coloured trousers as we call them, which are in reality a petticoat sewn up, and the prettiest article of Syrian costume. Her nails and the palms of her hands were dyed orange colour with henna, and on her feet she wore the red curly-toed slippers used in walking out of doors. She described her symptoms with the usual high querulous tone and rapid chatter peculiar to the native women, and was made happy by a couple of pills.
The places visited from this camp lay principally east of the plain. We ascended the high conical peak of Jebel D[)u]hy, so-called after Neby D[)u]hy ("the leader or generalâ), a prophet whose sacred place is on the summit. Who this prophet was I am unable to say, nor can we with any certainty apply a Biblical name to the mountain. The Crusaders called it sometimes Mount Endor, and generally Little Hermon, a title still known to the Nazareth Christians. The latter name was given in consequence of the expression, "Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in Thy name,â whence they seemed to have argued that Hermon was to be sought close to Tabor. They can never have looked northwards from the neighbourhood of Endor, or they would have seen the rounded, isolated mound, like a huge mole-hill, which is Tabor, and behind it far away the magnificent, snowy dome of the second sacred mountain of the text--the true Hermon.