In Camp, Mount Carmel, Sept. 10.—It is not generally known that the Druse nation extends as far south as Carmel. The most southern village occupied by them in Syria is at Dalieh, about two miles from my present camp; their most northern home is at Aleppo. When, nine hundred years ago, Duruzi, the teacher from whom they take their name, came from Egypt to spread his new teaching, it was accepted by a tribe of people who lived in the neighbourhood of Aleppo, whither they had originally migrated from the province of Yemen, in Arabia. Adopting the new and mysterious faith, which, while it is a most interesting metaphysical and theological study, is too recondite to enter upon here, the body of the tribe migrated south, took possession of the valleys of the southern Lebanon, and made their headquarters at the foot of Mount Hermon. Spreading east from there, they crossed the tract known in ancient times as Iturea, and found a natural fortress in the volcanic region anciently called Trachonitis, the Biblical Argob, and in the mountains now called the Jebel Druse. Here they increased and multiplied, and in the early part of the seventeenth century produced that most remarkable warrior Fakr-Eddin, the only man of note of whom the Druses can boast. He conquered Beyrout and the southern coast towns, extending his sway as far south as Carmel, and as far east as Tiberias; and under his auspices the mountains of Galilee and Carmel became settled by Druses.
It is, therefore, not much more than two hundred and fifty years since the Druses first came to Carmel, and it is probable that when they did so they found the mountain wholly unoccupied, excepting by a few Christian hermits and devotees who lived in its caves—for the Carmelite monks had been driven away and their monastery destroyed three hundred years before; and, indeed, it was only at the time of the Druse occupation that the first attempt was made to restore it. For the two centuries during which the crusaders held the Holy Land prior to the end of the thirteenth century, Carmel was occupied by them, and the remains of their military posts are still to be found on many of the summits of the mountain; indeed, many of the old stones of which the village of Esfia is built, near which my camp is situated, bear their devices carved on them. Before the time of the crusaders there may have been Moslem villages on Carmel, but its glory departed when Palestine was conquered by the Saracens in the seventh century, and the last remains of Roman civilization, the traces of which still cover the mountain, were destroyed.