"When you have become accustomed to these, the guide takes you to where there are blocks, not a few but many, varying from twenty-four to thirty feet long, and proportionally wide and deep. Some of them are way up in the air at the tops of columns sixty or seventy feet high, and you can't help wondering what kind of machinery must have been used to get them there.
"You get tired of saying 'Here's another,' 'Look at this,' 'See this one,' and similar expressions, and then you tell the guide as much. You are tired of seeing so many of these great blocks.
"Then he takes you round to the western wall, and points to a section of it. Your eyes follow the direction of his hand.
"In that wall, twenty feet above the ground, are three stones, lying end to end. They are thirteen feet square at the ends, and their respective lengths are sixty-three, sixty-three and three-quarters, and sixty-four feet.
"Stop and think how large one of the stones is. Measure off sixty-four feet in the garden, and then look thirteen feet up the side of the house, and another thirteen feet along the ground; then you'll have some idea of these immense stones. Mark Twain says, in 'The Innocents Abroad,' that each of these stones is about as large as three street-cars placed end to end, but a third higher and wider than a street-car; or it might be better represented by two railway freight-cars of the largest pattern coupled together.
"In the quarries whence these stones were taken, a mile from the temples, is another stone considerably larger, but it has never been moved or even detached from the bed-rock, and, therefore, Doctor Bronson says it doesn't count.
"You ask how these stones were moved and laid into the walls and platforms. We'll tell you as soon as we find out.
"The people that built these temples knew some things we don't know, just as the ancient Egyptians did. But we can console ourselves with the reflection that we have many things of which they were ignorant. We have steamships and railways, the telephone and telegraph, glass in our windows, umbrellas, oysters on the half shell, ice-cream, ready-made-clothing stores, pug-dogs, and I don't know what else. We are far more comfortable than they were, and if we could only satisfy our curiosity about their modes of moving these enormous blocks of stone there would be nothing to envy them for.
"So much for Baalbec. We spent the forenoon there, and made a thorough examination of the ruins; then we had a substantial lunch and started for Shtora, twenty miles away. Our route was along the Plain of Buka, which lies between Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, and is a fertile strip of land from two to five miles wide. There are few trees on the plain, in spite of the fertility of the soil. Rain had fallen the night before, and the soil was sticky, like that of some of our Western prairies, so that lumps were continually forming on our horses' feet. We passed several villages, and also a good-sized town called Zahleh; it lies at the foot of the slope of the Lebanon mountain, and is surrounded with orchards and vineyards.