“The Cedars of the Lord”—we understand now why the peasantry of Lebanon call them thus. It has become our own name for them too. Long before we ride downward from their royal solitude to the Great Sea and the great busy world, we have come to think of them as in deed and truth,
“The trees of Jehovah ...
The cedars of Lebanon, which He hath planted.”
CHAPTER XIII
THE GIANT STONES OF BAALBEK
The most impressive of all the ancient temples of Syria can now be reached by a comfortable railway journey from either Damascus or Beirut. But this way the traveler comes upon the ruins too quickly to appreciate adequately their splendid situation and marvelous size. I shall always be thankful that, on my first visit to Baalbek, I approached it very slowly as I rode from our camp among the cedars of Lebanon. For the longer you look at these temples and the greater the distance from which you behold them, the more fully do you realize that whatever race first built a shrine here chose the spot which, of all their land, had the largest, noblest setting for a sanctuary; and the better also do you understand that these structures had to be made unique in their grandeur because anything less imposing would have seemed paltry in comparison with the surrounding glories of nature.
Where the Bikaʿ is highest and widest and most fertile, on a foothill of Anti-Lebanon which projects far enough to give a commanding outlook in all directions, stands Baalbek, the City of the Sun-God. Far northward Hollow Syria leads to the open wheat-lands of Homs and Hama; at the south it sinks gently to the foot of Hermon. Back of the city are the peaks of the Eastern Mountains, and across the level valley rise the highest summits of Lebanon. It is no wonder that the approaching traveler finds it difficult at first to realize the magnitude of the ruins. Any work of man would be dwarfed by the magnificent heights which look down upon Baalbek. But what an inspiration these same mountains must have been to the unknown architect who conceived the daring grandeur of the Temple of the Sun!
When I viewed the ruins from the summit of the highest mountain of Lebanon, their columns did not seem especially large. Then I remembered that there are few structures whose details can be distinguished at all from a point twenty miles away. After descending many thousand feet through rocky ravines and dry water-courses, we came out on the Bikaʿ and again saw the temples. They now appeared of moderate size and very near. It was hard to believe that a few minutes’ canter would not bring us to them and, as we rode across the monotonous level of the valley, it seemed as if each new mile would surely be the last. When I had traveled for an hour straight toward their slender columns and found them apparently as far away as ever, I began to understand that these temples must be of a bigness beyond anything that I had ever seen before.
While we were looking toward Mount Hermon, whose conical summit rose from behind the southern horizon, the hot, shimmering air began to arrange itself in horizontal layers of varying density, and before our wondering eyes there grew a picture of cool and shady comfort. Four or five miles away a grove of date-palms stood beside a beautiful blue lake in which were a number of little islands, each with its cluster of bushes or its group of trees; and, just beyond the islands, the rippling water laved the steep sides of Mount Hermon. It was a cheering sight for the tired traveler. This was no freak of an imagination crazed by privation and exhaustion. Everything was as clear-cut and distinct as were the temples of Baalbek. We knew very well that there was no lake in the Bikaʿ and that Mount Hermon was not within fifty miles of where it seemed to be; yet we agreed upon every detail of the wonderful mirage. We counted the wooded islets; we pointed out to each other the beauty of the shrubbery and the symmetry of the waving palm trees; we remarked upon the sharp reflections of the branches in the clear water. Then, while we looked, the islands began to swim around, the bushes shrank together, the trees shifted their positions, the blue water faded into a misty white, old Hermon receded far into the background—and soon all that was left were two or three dusty palms bowing listlessly over the dry, brown earth in the sizzling heat.
I had always thought of Baalbek as a magnificent ruin in the midst of a wilderness; at best, I expected to find huddled beneath the temples a tiny hamlet like that at Palmyra. But as we came nearer to the spot of green about the columns, it grew larger and larger, and finally opened out into a prosperous-looking town of five thousand inhabitants besides, as we discovered later, a garrison of Turkish soldiers and a host of summer visitors. The bazaars were busy and noisy, and the half-dozen hotels were filled with the cream of Syrian society. Gay young prodigals from Beirut clattered recklessly along on blooded mares, or lolled back in rickety barouches, talking French to pretty girls whose silk dresses were so nearly correct that our masculine eyes could not detect just what was the matter with them.