We slept that night in an Arab house at Baalbek. Our beds were on divans or couches. We were tended by Arab man-servants and maid-servants and were bitten by Arab fleas. The rooms of every Arab’s house contain divans that extend along the end furthest from the door and sometimes along one of the sides. They consist usually of benches or frames not quite as high as the seat of a chair and about three and a half feet wide and are covered with mattresses that render them agreeable to sit or recline upon We found them quite comfortable after our hard day’s travel, though perhaps a trifle too hard for American natives. In the poorer houses these divans are of the same material as the floor—solid earth—covered with a mat of straw.
Most of the Arab houses are extremely dirty and abound in vermin. The one we occupied was quite neat and well kept, and the dragoman who accompanied us from Stora expressed surprise at our discovery of fleas. But we did not mind them as we were too weary to be bothered about trifles, and fleas are familiar acquaintances to a person who has travelled in Italy, Russia, and Turkey. Travelling, like poverty, acquaints one with a great many varieties of bed-fellows.
We were up long before day; we breakfasted by candle light, and before the sun tipped the summits of the Lebanon range with golden color, we were on horseback and away. Through the gray dawn we took the last look at the tall columns of the Temple of the Sun standing as they have stood for centuries and may stand for centuries to come.
Shall the edifices which we erect ever become like those of Baalbek, shrouded in a veil of mystery well nigh impenetrable, and fill so little place in the page of history that future ages shall not know who built them and what was their purpose?
Little, very little, is known of Baalbek; her foundation and her founders are unrevealed mysteries, and of her glory and progress and decline we have only the most meagre information. That the city is very ancient there can be no doubt; that her edifices are among the wonders of the world we have the evidence before us.
We rode down the plain of Buka as we had ascended it the day before. A little after eleven o’clock we flung ourselves or rather dropped ungracefully from our saddles and greeted the swarthy Kalil who had come out a short distance with the carriage to meet us. Kalil and the horses soon took us to Stora where we dined and then packed ourselves in the carriage to continue our journey to Damascus. We crossed the flat plain at a gallop and then entered a long valley leading up the range which is over against Lebanon.
This valley is known as the Wady Harir; then we cross a plain and after leaving this we enter a narrow winding glen, the Wady il Kurn, or “Valley of the Horn.” This pass is one of the wildest in the Anti-Lebanon; it is three miles long and was once very dangerous on account of the robbers that infested it. The sides are rough and but slightly wooded and the bottom is evidently at certain seasons of the year the bed of a torrent.
