Fri 4 [4 May 1900] Up at 6. Went up to the Sheikh's house and had a second breakfast of bread sweetened milk and leban. Sent the mules and 'Ali to Kureiyeh while Hannah N ed Din and I rode to Salkhad. At first through little hills and cornfields, Arabs pasturing sheep and camels - some of them belong to the Druzes and the Arabs are just shepherds for them. Poppies, pheasant's eye daisies ranunculus. Got to El Kuseir, a round castle perched up on a tell, and then on to Ayun across water meadows of lovely grass and the flowering reed. Ayun quite deserted but the houses more than half standing. A lovely stream by it and a square tower in the middle. The houses have curious rows of niches inside. There is a mazar and at [sic] lot of women and children from Orman [Urman] were visiting it - too pretty. I went in to a very well preserved house with stone windows and doors. N ed D said there was a bi'r under the stone erection inside it. They had killed a sheep in its honour. So onto Salkhad which we reached at 7.30. The castle is very fine, built in the crater of a volcano. In the moat is a broken lintel carved with the usual vine pattern pretty bad. Lions on the walls high up. The rock is banked up finely with sloping masonry. Inside it is very ruined. A greek inscription over the door and some broken capitals inside. Various passages and rooms and 2 birkets. Fine cornices round the top. The Halweh is an interesting house. It has good windows and a bad vine carving over the door. A hexagonal tower broken at the top - a campanile - with an Arabic inscription round. The view into the plain lovely. The Rasif running straight to Bosrah [Busr'a ash Sham] and straight SE to the desert. Little volcanic hills, then flat[?]. Rode on at 2 and reached Kureiyeh at 4.30, passing Muneithereh a village without a tower. A house with a fine stone door and solid windows. Great herds of camels white and brown[?]. An enormous crowd round my tent, 2 little sons of the Sheikh (the Beg is his paternal uncle 'Am[?]) very[?] beautiful and good mannered who bade me welcome. After tea I came out and found 2 little daughters of the Sheikh very pretty who took me up to their house where I had coffee with a lot of women. Lovely straw dishes, but too great a crowd. The little boys kept them off. The Sheikh has 5 children. Walked back past the interesting birket lined with fine masonry, a raised place with 3 rows of pillars standing on the steps supporting a roof. A ruined church behind. The old work is extraordinarily solid here. Then came to my tent the schoolmaster, a Beyrouti Christian having a little French. Lots of Christians here and in Salkhad. My drinking water thick mud.