During
the winter, the peasants suspend their silk-worms in bags, to the
portrait of some favourite saint, and implore his influence for a
plenteous harvest of silk; from this custom the convent derives a
considerable income.
Kanobin is the seat of the patriarch of the Maronites, who is at the
head of twelve Maronite bishops, and here in former times he generally
passed the summer months, retiring in the winter to Mar Hanna; but the
vexations and insults which the patriarchs were exposed to from the
Metaweli, in their excursions to and from Baalbec, induced them for many
years to abandon this residence. The present patriarch is the first who
for a long time has resided in
HOSRUN.
[p.22]Kanobin. Though I had no letter of introduction to him, and was in
the dress of a peasant, he invited me to dinner, and I met at his table
his secretary, Bishop Stefano, who has been educated at Rome, and has
some notions of Europe. While I was there, a rude peasant was ordained a
priest. Kanobin had once a considerable library; but it has been
gradually dispersed; and not a vestige of it now remains. The cells of
the monks are, for the most part, in ruins.
Three hours distant from Kanobin, at the convent Kashheya, which is near
the village Ehden, is a printing office, where prayer-books in the
Syriac language are printed. This language is known and spoken by many
Maronites, and in this district the greater part of them write Arabic in
the Syriac characters. The names of the owners of the silk-worms were
all written in this character in different hands, upon the bags
suspended in the church.
I returned to Bshirrai by an easier road than that which I had travelled
in the morning; at the end of three quarters of an hour I regained the
upper plain, from whence I proceeded for two hours by a gentle ascent,
through fields and orchards, up to the village. The potatoe succeeds
here very well; a crop was growing in the garden of the Carmelite
convent; it has also been cultivated for some time past in Kesrouan. In
the mountains about Kanobin tigers are said to be frequently met with; I
suppose ounces are meant.
October 4th.--I departed from Bshirrai with the intention of returning
to Zahle over the higher range of the Libanus. We crossed the Kadisha,
at a short distance from Bishirrai, above the place where it falls over
the precipice: at one hour distant from Bshirrai, and opposite to it, we
passed the village of Hosrun.
