Of an evening they assemble at one anothers’ houses, and there, with pipe in hand, seated in such an attitude that their knees are on a level with their nose, they talk politics by the hour. They are generally a dissatisfied, gloomy, and grumbling people; and their usual topic of conversation is exactly what John Bull is so much laughed at for, viz., the hardness of the times. They pull to pieces the pasha, the emir, the effendis—lament over the prospects of a bad silk crop, or a worse wheat harvest, speaking feelingly of the general lack of money—foretell that things will be certain to go on from bad to worse—predict a famine—prophesy a murrain amongst the cattle—see in the yellow tinge of the western atmosphere the cholera—smell out of the heavy night-dew an interminable catalogue of maladies, as absurd and unknown as any of the foregoing calamities; and having worked themselves up to an extreme pitch of wretchedness, they disperse for the night, and retrace their steps to their respective homes, croaking the while, or hooting gloomily to one another just as a parcel of ravens would croak or owls hoot as they wing their way to roost, when the distant growl of thunder foretells the coming storm.
The Druses are great hypocrites in religious matters. One of their religious books gives them this liberty, for it says:—“_Embrace the religion of those who have power over you_; _for such is the pleasure of our_ MAOULA, _till he_, _to whom the best times are known_, _shall unsheathe the sword_, _and display the power of his unity_.” Hence with the Turks, they pretend to be devout Moslems—fast when they fast, and feast when they feast. With the Christians they are equally devoted to the Adrah Mariam—the Virgin Mary; and in private they despise and detest both: but I believe that the Druses have really great faith and confidence in the English, whom they suppose to be all Protestants; and their idea of a Protestant is that their religion is a species of freemasonry, which very much resembles their own. Of late years political struggles on the mountains have served rather to strengthen this belief; for the Druses were invariably supported by the English, and the native attachés, agents, and other people, not only of the Consulates in the neighbouring towns, but also English travellers, lost no opportunity of impressing this fact upon the minds of the Druses’ who were already predisposed to such a belief from the fact of a tradition long existent amongst them, that many of their noblest families were descended from some of the princes amongst the Crusaders.