From Damascus we resolved to recross the Anti-Lebanon mountains en route for Balbec. This range is extremely bare and rugged from the action of the weather upon the friable rock, and probably also from earthquakes. The mountains are in many places worn or split open by great fissures into separate lofty and fantastic shapes. In the uncertain grey light of the early morning we passed under a hundred of these; some of them stood almost perpendicular, towering high over our heads like weird giant statues, minarets, and spires of almost every conceivable form, some airy and elegant, but most wildly grand or grotesque, and threatening to fall upon the passing traveller. The scene around recalled the lines:
“What are the temples man hath built on earth?
The monumental column, dome, and spire—
His proudest works of art. Did he give birth
To one sublime design? Earth, air, and fire,
His unacknowledged tutors. If amiss
His plan, send him to study temples such as this!”
The absence of vegetation was remarkable: a very few slender willows were occasionally to be seen in the deeper gorges, but for many miles desolation and silence reigned supreme, broken perhaps by the occasional scream of the eagle, for which the range provides numerous eyries. On the mountains more northward numerous Greek Church monasteries and chapels have centuries ago been erected, and the hermits who inhabit them have certainly retired from the world.
We stopped at the half-way station on the diligence road, which is situated in the Great Lebanon Valley—Cœle-Syria. It consists of a small inn, with numerous stables and a small farmhouse. Here, on horseback, we resumed our journey northward along the foot of the Lebanon Mountains. This valley is well watered by numerous little streams, trickling down from the mountains, which feed the Leontes, a small river that flows southward, and eventually falls into the Mediterranean between the ruins of Tyre and Sidon. This river we had crossed in the diligence by a plain stone bridge, apparently of French construction.
Along the lower shoulders of the Lebanon there is a considerable population, forming numerous little villages, seated at a small elevation above the valley, and there is considerable cultivation upon some of the slopes, consisting of patches of corn, olive and other fruit trees, and occasionally vines. The population consists of Maronites, Druses, and Moslems. The latter, however, are the least numerous. These all live very much apart, especially the Druses, between whom and the Maronites great jealousy exists. The houses are of stone and mud, of large size, generally of one, and sometimes of two storeys. Their roofs consist of mud and branches laid over beams of rough trees. This mud is largely used all over Syria as cement or concrete, which it somewhat resembles, being formed of the débris of the limestone and chalk rocks.