We will call upon Fred for a description of Baalbec and its wonderful ruins:
"We were very tired when we got to Baalbec, and did not care much for ruins or anything else. But a good sleep refreshed us, and when we started out for our day's work you would not have suspected we were the worn-out travellers of the night before. That shows the effect of a good sleep in the pure air of the mountains of Syria.
"The pillars and columns of the temple that are still in position can be seen a long way off, and nobody needs the words of the guide to know what they are. Our camp was right in the centre of the ruins, and so we had a view of them by night as we rode in among them. They seemed enormously large then, and, strange to say, they didn't appear much smaller when we had daylight for looking at them. The fact is they are immense, and the most stupendous thing we have seen since we left Egypt.
THE RUINS OF BAALBEC.
"Nobody knows when these temples were built; but it is generally believed that the city to which they belonged was the Heliopolis of the Greeks and Romans. There is no authentic history of the place earlier than the fourth century, but coins of Heliopolis have been found of the second century, which show it was then a Roman city. There are three temples here, and they bear the names of 'The Great Temple,' 'The Temple of the Sun,'and 'The Circular Temple.' We have been through them, or, rather, of what remains of them, and to say we have been impressed by their grandeur is to convey a very faint idea of our feelings. We have seen nothing in the country to compare with them, and our admiration for their builders is as great as it can possibly be.
"It would take many pages for me to describe the courts, and porticos, and portals, and other parts or accessories of these temples at Baalbec, and I should turn your head into an ant-hill of figures long before I could get through. You would be constantly reminded of what we told you of the temples of Karnak and Thebes, in Egypt, and perhaps you might grow impatient before I reached the end. Rather than run the risk of anything of the kind I'll jump all that, and come at once to what kept us in a string of exclamation points all the time we were walking among the ruins.
"The great wonder of Baalbec was the size of the stones used in the work of construction. Wherever you go, whether in the vaulted arches beneath the platform, through the subterranean passages that were used as stables in the Middle Ages, or among the walls and the rows of columns in court and portico, the immensity of the stones takes away your breath. Hewn stones twelve, fifteen, or twenty feet long, and proportionally wide and high, are in the walls, and as regularly laid up as though they were common bricks.