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ZEITCN town and scenes 399
bungalow, and stood clear in its own garden, the
most northerly building in Zeitun. Here I heard
my own language spoken, and slept in a room with
English books upon the shelves. So much one may
do even in Zeitun.
During the next forenoon—for I was to leave at
midday—I had just time to go a little about the
town. Kain and hanging clouds continued, so nothing
of Beirut Dasfh, the ten or eleven thousand - foot
mountain, on a spur of which Zeitun stands, could
be seen. The town is built on a rocky promontory
thrusting into the gorge of the Zeitun Su, with a
lesser gorge and torrent on either side. On the
highest point of this jutting rock is the Kale or
Castle, on one face overhanging a sheer precipice,
some of its rooms built out over the void,—on others
rearing: itself above terraced building^s. Behind the
Kale and tongue of rock the town—ni the weather
in which I saw it—literally went up into the clouds
in steps of hanging buildings. Zeitun is said to have
only about ten thousand inhabitants, and no town of
such modest size ever made a more impressive appearance.
The grey mass of clustering buildings, dotted
with a few white walls seen half obscured by floating
clouds, had the mystery of unknown size. For where
the topmost buildings lost themselves in clinging
vapour the mind pictured others, piled one upon the
other indefinitely ;
indeed, there was no conjecturing
where these clambering buildings did cease.
And going about among the buildings left you in
the same state of uncertainty as did a general
view. There seemed to be not ten yards of straight
street or passage anywhere. Sometimes you looked
downwards over sloping red -tiled roofs and flat
earthen roofs which seemed to cover the mountainside
like slates, so closely were they set. And sometimes,
again, the impressive view w^as decidedly upwards,
for above you rose a sheer hundred feet of
wall, topped with buildings serenely overhanging.
In this grey clambering town streets and alleys