The Holy Land and Syria

by Frank G. Carpenter

Of the great cedars of Lebanon which Solomon used in building his temple, only a few are left. The ancient Israelites regarded these trees as the ornaments of the mountains and the types of manly strength and beauty

The plain of Beirut is covered with luxuriant gardens, and tree-lined avenues lead out of the city. Beirut, one of the oldest cities on the Phœnician Coast, is the metropolis of Syria and Lebanon and the seaport of Damascus

CHAPTER XXIX
ACROSS THE LEBANON MOUNTAINS BY RAIL

It seems almost sacrilegious to travel by rail over the highways of the Bible. The iron tracks are laid in the pathways of the prophets, and the ghosts of the saints may be roused by the shriek of the locomotives. The modern traveller can cover in a few hours by rail distances that were several days’ journey in the times of our Lord.

My first railroad trip in the Holy Land was from the port of Jaffa up the mountains of Judea to the city of Jerusalem. My second was on the Mecca road from the lower end of the Sea of Galilee through the great plains of the Hauran to Damascus over the mountains of Lebanon to Beirut on the Mediterranean Sea. During the latter trip I went from Rayak, in the Valley of Lebanon, between the two ranges of mountains, along the road which has been built northward through the Cœle-Syria to Aleppo.

All of these roads are comparatively new, and some are still building. The Mecca line now runs as far south as Medina, where Mohammed came after his flight from Mecca, and where his tomb is. That city has something like forty thousand people and is one of the most fanatical of the Moslem centres. It will be the chief stopping place on the way to Mecca.

Mecca lies about two hundred and fifty miles still farther south and the track is being laid toward that point. When the first surveys were made there were two Christian civil engineers in the surveying party, but the people were so intolerant that these men were kept hidden the greater part of the time and did their work inside the tents. They were not allowed to spy out the land, to see, or be seen.