THE GREAT COURT, BA'ALBEK
Our departure from Ba'albek was marked by a regrettable occurrence—my dog Kurt was found to have disappeared in the night. Unlike most Syrian pariah dogs, he was of a very friendly disposition, he was also (and in this respect he did not differ from his half fed clan) insatiably greedy; the probability was, therefore, that he had been lured away with a bone and shut up till we were safely out of the road. Ḥabīb set off in one direction through the village, Mikhāil in another, while the Commissioner of Police, who had appeared on the agitated scene, tried to pour balm upon my wounded feelings. After a few minutes Ḥabīb reappeared with Kurt, all wag, behind him on a chain. He had found him, he explained breathlessly, in the house of one who had thought to steal him, fastened with this very chain:
"And when Kurt heard my voice he barked, and I went into the yard and saw him. And the lord of the chain demanded it of me, and by God! I refused to give it him and struck him to the earth with it instead. God curse him for a thievish Metāwileh! And so I left him."
I have, therefore, the pleasure to record that the Metāwileh are as dishonest a sect as rumour would have them to be, but that their machinations can be brought to nought by vigilant Christians.
COLUMNS OF THE TEMPLE OF THE SUN, BA'ALBEK
We rode down the wide and most dreary valley between Lebanon and Anti-Libanus. I might have gone by train to Ḥomṣ, and eke to Ḥamāh, but I preferred to cross from side to side of the valley as the fancy took me, and visit such places of interest as the country had to show, and this could only be done on horseback. North of Ba'albek all Syria was new to me; it marked an epoch, too, that we had reached the frontier of the Palestine Exploration Map. I now had recourse to Kiepert's small but excellent sheet, which I had abstracted from the volume of Oppenheim that had been left at Ṣāleh. There is no other satisfactory map until, at a line some thirty miles south of Aleppo, Kiepert's big Kleinasien 1-400,000 begins; when the American Survey publishes its geographical volume the deficiency will, I hope, be rectified. After four and a half hours we came to Lebweh, where one of the principal sources of the Orontes bursts out of the earth in a number of springs, very beautiful to see; and here we were overtaken by two soldiers who had been sent after us by the Ḳāimaḳām with a polite inquiry as to whether I would not like an escort. I sent one back and kept the other, fearing to hurt the Ḳāimaḳām's feelings; Derwīsh was the man's name, helpful and pleasant he proved, as indeed were all in the long series of his successors who accompanied us until I stepped into the train at Konia. Some of them added greatly to the pleasure of the journey, telling me many tales of their experiences and adventures as we rode together hour by hour. They enjoyed the break in garrison life that was thus afforded them, and they enjoyed also the daily fee of a mejideh (4s. roughly) which was so much more certain than the Sultan's pay. I gave them besides a little tip when they reached the term of their services, and they fed themselves and their horses on provisions and grain that I shrewdly suspect were taken from the peasantry by force, a form of official exaction that the traveller is powerless to prevent.