CHAPTER XLIII.
_Festivities in Canobia_
GALLOPED up the winding steep of Canobia the Sheikh Said Djinblat,
one of the most popular chieftains of the Druses; amiable and brave,
trustworthy and soft-mannered. Four of his cousins rode after him: he
came from his castle of Mooktara, which was not distant. He was in the
prime of manhood, tall and lithe; enveloped in a burnous which shrouded
his dark eye, his white turban, and his gold-embroidered vests; his long
lance was couched in its rest, as he galloped up the winding steep of
Canobia.
Came slowly, on steeds dark as night, up the winding steep of Canobia,
with a company of twenty men on foot armed with muskets and handjars,
the two ferocious brothers Abuneked, Nasif and Hamood. Pale is the cheek
of the daughters of Maron at the fell name of Abuneked. The Abunekeds
were the Druse lords of the town of Deir el Kamar, where the majority of
the inhabitants were Christian. When the patriarch tried to deprive the
Druses of their feudal rights, the Abunekeds attacked and sacked their
own town of Deir el Kamar. The civil war being terminated, and it being
agreed, in the settlement of the indemnities from the Druses to the
Maronites, that all plunder still in possession of the plunderers should
be restored, Nasif Abuneked said, 'I have five hundred silver horns, and
each of them I took from the head of a Christian woman.
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