phonographs and shoes, or announce the subjects of the moving-picture dramas for the coming week. Carriages throng the principal thoroughfares, the better class of citizens wear European costumes, and no passenger-steamship drops anchor in the harbor without being met by the red-shirted boatmen and suave interpreters of the enterprising tourist-agencies.
To the casual visitor, Beirut seems therefore a very peaceable, matter-of-fact place. He does not experience the feeling of half-confessed uneasiness which marked his strolls through the native quarters of other Oriental cities. Yet the busy every-day life of the seaport moves upon the thin crust of a seething volcano of hate, which all too often breaks out into murderous rage.
The Moslem inhabitants are, of course, backed by all the power of the government, legal and illegal; but they are much inferior in numbers and in wealth to the Christian population. Religious jealousy is therefore never far from the boiling-point. Any insult or violence offered by an adherent of the one faith to a believer in the other is the signal for a long series of reprisals and counter-reprisals, and there is always the possibility that these may culminate in general rioting and massacre.
The morning I first landed In Beirut, the Christian watchman of the American Press was found almost literally cut in pieces. The assassin was absolutely
[38]
