History of Phoenicia Part 1

History of Phoenicia.

by George Rawlinson.

PREPARER'S NOTE

The original text contains a number of characters that are not available even in 8-bit Windows text. Where possible these have been represented with a similar letter, but some things, e.g. Hebrew script, have been omitted.

The 8-bit version of this text includes Windows font characters. These may be lost in 7-bit versions of the text, or when viewed with different fonts.

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The numerous sketches and maps in the original have also been omitted.

PREFACE

Histories of Phoenicia or of the Phoenicians were written towards the middle of the present century by Movers and Kenrick. The elaborate work of the former writer[01] collected into five moderate-sized volumes all the notices that cla.s.sical antiquity had preserved of the Religion, History, Commerce, Art, &c., of this celebrated and interesting nation.

Kenrick, making a free use of the stores of knowledge thus acc.u.mulated, added to them much information derived from modern research, and was content to give to the world in a single volume of small size,[02] very scantily ill.u.s.trated, the ascertained results of criticism and inquiry on the subject of the Phoenicians up to his own day. Forty-four years have since elapsed; and in the course of them large additions have been made to certain branches of the inquiry, while others have remained very much as they were before. Travellers, like Robinson, Walpole, Tristram, Renan, and Lortet, have thrown great additional light on the geography, geology, fauna, and flora of the country. Excavators, like Renan and the two Di Cesnolas, have caused the soil to yield up most valuable remains bearing upon the architecture, the art, the industrial pursuits, and the manners and customs of the people. Antiquaries, like M. Clermont-Ganneau and MM. Perrot and Chipiez, have subjected the remains to careful examination and criticism, and have definitively fixed the character of Phoenician Art, and its position in the history of artistic effort.

Researches are still being carried on, both in Phoenicia Proper and in the Phoenician dependency of Cyprus, which are likely still further to enlarge our knowledge with respect to Phoenician Art and Archaeology; but it is not probable that they will affect seriously the verdict already delivered by competent judges on those subjects. The time therefore appeared to the author to have come when, after nearly half a century of silence, the history of the people might appropriately be rewritten. The subject had long engaged his thoughts, closely connected as it is with the histories of Egypt, and of the "Great Oriental Monarchies," which for thirty years have been to him special objects of study; and a work embodying the chief results of the recent investigations seemed to him a not unsuitable termination to the historical efforts which his resignation of the Professors.h.i.+p of Ancient History at Oxford, and his entrance upon a new sphere of labour, bring naturally to an end.

The author wishes to express his vast obligations to MM. Perrot and Chipiez for the invaluable a.s.sistance which he has derived from their great work,[03] and to their publishers, the MM. Hachette, for their liberality in allowing him the use of so large a number of MM. Perrot and Chipiez' Ill.u.s.trations. He is also much beholden to the same gentlemen for the use of charts and drawings originally published in the "Geographie Universelle." Other works from which he has drawn either materials or ill.u.s.trations, or both, are (besides Movers' and Kenrick's) M. Ernest Renan's "Mission de Phenicie," General Di Cesnola's "Cyprus,"

A. Di Cesnola's "Salaminia," M. Ceccaldi's "Monuments Antiques de Cypre," M. Daux's "Recherches sur les Emporia Pheniciens," the "Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum," M. Clermont-Ganneau's "Imagerie Phenicienne," Mr. Davis's "Carthage and her Remains," Gesenius's "Scripturae Linguaeque Phoeniciae Monumenta," Lortet's "La Syrie d'aujourd'hui," Serra di Falco's "Antichita della Sicilia," Walpole's "Ansayrii," and Canon Tristram's "Land of Israel." The difficulty has been to select from these copious stores the most salient and noteworthy facts, and to marshal them in such a form as would make them readily intelligible to the ordinary English reader. How far he has succeeded in doing this he must leave the public to judge. In making his bow to them as a "Reader" and Writer "of Histories,"[04] he has to thank them for a degree of favour which has given a ready sale to all his previous works, and has carried some of them through several editions.

CANTERBURY: August 1889.

HISTORY OF PHOENICIA

CHAPTER I--THE LAND

Phoenicia--Origin of the name--Spread of the name southwards--Real length of Phoenicia along the coast-- Breadth and area--General character of the region--The Plains--Plain of Sharon--Plain of Acre--Plain of Tyre--Plain of Sidon--Plain of Berytus--Plain of Marathus--Hilly regions--Mountain ranges--Carmel--Casius--Bargylus--Lebanon-- Beauty of Lebanon--Rivers--The Litany--The Nahr-el-Berid-- The Kadisha--The Adonis--The Lycus--The Tamyras--The Bostrenus--The Zaherany--The Headlands--Main characteristics, inaccessibility, picturesqueness, productiveness.

Phoenice, or Phoenicia, was the name originally given by the Greeks--and afterwards adopted from them by the Romans--to the coast region of the Mediterranean, where it faces the west between the thirty-second and the thirty-sixth parallels. Here, it would seem, in their early voyagings, the Pre-Homeric Greeks first came upon a land where the palm-tree was not only indigenous, but formed a leading and striking characteristic, everywhere along the low sandy sh.o.r.e lifting its tuft of feathery leaves into the bright blue sky, high above the undergrowth of fig, and pomegranate, and alive. Hence they called the tract Phoenicia, or "the Land of Palms;" and the people who inhabited it the Phoenicians, or "the Palm-tree people."

The term was from the first applied with a good deal of vagueness. It was probably originally given to the region opposite Cyprus, from Gabala in the north--now Jebili--to Antaradus (Tortosa) and Marathus (Amrith) towards the south, where the palm-tree was first seen growing in rich abundance. The palm is the numismatic emblem of Aradus,[11] and though not now very frequent in the region which Strabo calls "the Aradian coast-tract,"[12] must anciently have been among its chief ornaments. As the Grecian knowledge of the coast extended southward, and a richer and still richer growth of the palm was continually noticed, almost every town and every village being embosomed in a circle of palm groves, the name extended itself until it reached as far south at any rate as Gaza, or (according to some) as Rhinocolura and the Torrens aegypti. Northward the name seems never to have pa.s.sed beyond Cape Posideium (Possidi) at the foot of Mount Casius, the tract between this and the range of Taurus being always known as Syria, never as Phoenecia or Phoenice.

The entire length of the coast between the limits of Cape Possidi and Rhinocolura is, without reckoning the lesser indentations, about 380 miles, or nearly the same as that of Portugal. The indentations of the coast-line are slight. From Rhinocolura to Mount Carmel, a distance of 150 miles, not a single strong promontory a.s.serts itself, nor is there a single bay of sufficient depth to attract the attention of geographers.

Carmel itself is a notable headland, and shelters a bay of some size; but these once pa.s.sed the old uniformity returns, the line being again almost unbroken for a distance of seventy-five miles, from Haifa to Beyrout (Berytus). North of Beyrout we find a little more variety.

The coast projects in a tolerably bold sweep between the thirty-fourth parallel and Tripolis (Tarabulus) and recedes almost correspondingly between Tripolis and Tortosa (Antaradus), so that a deepish bay is formed between Lat. 34 27' and Lat. 34 45', whence the line again runs northward unindented for fifty miles, to beyond Gabala (Jebili).

After this, between Gabala and Cape Posideium there is considerable irregularity, the whole tract being mountainous, and spurs from Bargylus and Casius running down into the sea and forming a succession of headlands, of which Cape Posideium is the most remarkable.

But while the name Phoenicia is applied geographically to this long extent--nearly 400 miles--of coast-line, historically and ethnically it has to be reduced within considerably narrower limits. A race, quite distinct from that of the Phoenicians, was settled from an early date on the southern portion of the west Asian coast, where it verges towards Africa. From Jabneh (Yebna) southwards was Palestine, the country of the Philistines, perhaps even from Joppa (Jaffa), which is made the boundary by Mela.[13] Thus at least eighty miles of coast-line must be deducted from the 380, and the length of Phoenicia along the Mediterranean sh.o.r.e must be regarded as not exceeding three hundred miles.

The width varied from eight or ten miles to thirty. We must regard as the eastern boundary of Phoenicia the high ridge which forms the watershed between the streams that flow eastward toward the Orontes, Litany, and Jordan, and those that flow westward into the Mediterranean.

It is difficult to say what was the _average_ width, but perhaps it may be fairly estimated at about fifteen miles. In this case the entire area would have been about 4,500 square miles.

The tract was one of a remarkably diversified character. Lofty mountain, steep wooded hill, chalky slope, rich alluvial plain, and sandy sh.o.r.e succeeded each other, each having its own charm, which was enhanced by contrast. The sand is confined to a comparatively narrow strip along the seash.o.r.e,[14] and to the sites of ancient harbours now filled up. It is exceedingly fine and of excellent silicious quality, especially in the vicinity of Sidon and at the foot of Mount Carmel. The most remarkable plains are those of Sharon, Acre, Tyre, Sidon, Beyrout, and Marathus.

Sharon, so dear to the Hebrew poets,[15] is the maritime tract intervening between the highland of Samaria and the Mediterranean, extending from Joppa to the southern foot of Carmel--a distance of nearly sixty miles--and watered by the Chorseas, the Kaneh, and other rivers. It is a smooth, very slightly undulating tract, about ten miles in width from the sea to the foot of the mountains, which rise up abruptly from it without any intervening region of hills, and seem to bound it as a wall, above which tower the huge rounded ma.s.ses of Ebal and Gerizim, with the wooded cone, on which stood Samaria, nestling at their feet.[16] The sluggish streams, several of them containing water during the whole of the year, make their way across it between reedy banks,[17] and generally spread out before reaching the sh.o.r.e into wide marshes, which might be easily utilised for purposes of irrigation.

The soil is extremely rich, varying from bright red to deep black, and producing enormous crops of weeds or grain, according as it is cultivated or left in a state of nature. Towards the south the view over the region has been thus described: "From Ramleh there is a wide view on every side, presenting a prospect rarely surpa.s.sed in richness and beauty. I could liken it to nothing but the great plain of the Rhine by Heidelberg or, better still, to the vast plains of Lombardy, as seen from the cathedral of Milan and elsewhere. In the east the frowning mountains of Judah rose abruptly from the tract at their foot; while on the west, in fine contrast, the glittering waves of the Mediterranean Sea a.s.sociated our thoughts with Europe. Towards the north and south, as far as the eye could reach, the beautiful plain was spread out like a carpet at our feet, variegated with tracts of brown from which the crops had just been taken, and with fields still rich with the yellow of the ripe corn, or green with the springing millet. Immediately below us the eye rested on the immense olive groves of Ramleh and Lydda, and the picturesque towers and minarets and domes of these large villages. In the plain itself were not many villages, but the tract of hills and the mountain-side beyond, especially in the north-east, were perfectly studded with them, and as now seen in the reflected beams of the setting sun they seemed like white villas and hamlets among the dark hills, presenting an appearance of thriftiness and beauty which certainly would not stand a closer examination."[18] Towards its northern end Sharon is narrowed by the low hills which gather round the western flanks of Carmel, and gradually encroach upon the plain until it terminates against the shoulder of the mountain itself, leaving only a narrow beach at the foot of the promontory by which it is possible to communicate with the next plain towards the north.[19]

Compared with Sharon the plain of Acre is unimportant and of small extent. It reaches about eight miles along the sh.o.r.e, from the foot of Carmel to the headland on which the town of Acre stands, and has a width between the sh.o.r.e and the hills of about six miles. Like Sharon it is noted for its fertility. Watered by the two permanent streams of the Kishon and the Belus, it possesses a rich soil, which is said to be at present "perhaps the best cultivated and producing the most luxuriant crops, both of corn and weeds, of any in Palestine."[110] The Kishon waters it on the south, where it approaches Carmel, and is a broad stream,[111] though easily fordable towards its mouth. The Belus (Namaane) flows through it towards the north, was.h.i.+ng Acre itself, and is a stream of even greater volume than the Kishon, though it has but a short course.

The third of the Phoenician plains, as we proceed from south to north, is that of Tyre. This is a long but comparatively narrow strip, reaching from the Ras-el-Abiad towards the south to Sarepta on the north, a distance of about twenty miles, but in no part more than five miles across, and generally less than two miles. It is watered about midway by the copious stream of the Kasimiyeh or Litany, which, rising east of Lebanon in the Buka'a or Coelesyrian valley, forces its way through the mountain chain by a series of tremendous gorges, and debouches upon the Tyrian lowland about three miles to the south-east of the present city, near the modern Khan-el-Kasimiyeh, whence it flows peaceably to the sea with many windings through a broad low tract of meadow-land. Other rills and rivulets descending from the west flank of the great mountain increase the productiveness of the plain, while copious fountains of water gush forth with surprising force in places, more especially at Ras-el-Ain, three miles from Tyre, to the south.[112] The plain is, even at the present day, to a large extent covered with orchards, gardens, and cultivated fields, in which are grown rich crops of tobacco, cotton, and cereals.

The plain of Sidon, which follows that of Tyre, and is sometimes regarded as a part of it,[113] extends from a little north of Sarepta to the Ras-el-Jajunieh, a distance of about ten miles, and resembles that of Tyre in its princ.i.p.al features. It is long and narrow, never more than about two miles in width, but well-watered and very fertile. The princ.i.p.al streams are the Bostrenus (Nahr-el-Auly) in the north, just inside the promontory of Jajunieh, the Nahr-Sanik, south of Sidon, a torrent dry in the summer-time,[114] and the Nahr-ez-Zaherany, two and a half miles north of Sarepta, a river of moderate capacity. Fine fountains also burst from the earth in the plain itself, as the Ain-el-Kanterah and the Ain-el-Burak,[115] between Sarepta and the Zaherany river. Irrigation is easy and is largely used, with the result that the fruits and vegetables of Sada and its environs have the name of being among the finest of the country.[116]

The plain of Berytus (Beyrout) is the most contracted of all the Phoenician plains that are at all noticeable. It lies south, south-east, and east of the city, intervening between the high dunes or sand-hills which form the western portion of the Beyrout peninsula, and the skirts of Lebanon, which here approach very near to the sea. The plain begins at Wady Shuweifat on the south, about four miles from the town of Beyrout, and extends northwards to the sea on the western side of the Nahr Beyrout. The northern part of the plain is known as Ard-el-Burajineh. The plain is deficient in water,[117] yet is cultivated in olives and mulberries, and contains the largest olive grove in all Syria. A little beyond its western edge is the famous pine forest[118] from which (according to some) Berytus derived its name.[119]

The plain of Marathus is, next to Sharon, the most extensive in Phoenicia. It stretches from Jebili (Gabala) on the north to Arka towards the south, a distance of about sixty miles, and has a width varying from two to ten miles. The rock crops out from it in places and it is broken between Tortosa and Hammam by a line of low hills running parallel with the sh.o.r.e.[120] The princ.i.p.al streams which water it are the Nahr-el-Melk, or Badas, six miles south of Jebili, the Nahr Amrith, a strong running brook which empties itself into the sea a few miles south of Tortosa (Antaradus), the Nahr Kuble, which joins the Nahr Amrith near its mouth, and the Eleutherus or Nahr-el-Kabir, which reaches the sea a little north of Arka. Of these the Eleutherus is the most important. "It is a considerable stream even in summer, and in the rainy season it is a barrier to intercourse, caravans sometimes remaining encamped on its banks for several weeks, unable to cross."[121] The soil of the plain is shallow, the rock lying always near the surface; the streams are allowed to run to waste and form marshes, which breed malaria; a scanty population scarcely attempts more than the rudest and most inefficient cultivation; and the consequence is that the tract at present is almost a desert. Nature, however, shows its capabilities by covering it in the spring-time from end to end with a "carpet of flowers."[122]

From the edges of the plains, and sometimes from the very sh.o.r.e of the sea, rise up chalky slopes or steep rounded hills, partly left to nature and covered with trees and shrubs, partly at the present day cultivated and studded with villages. The hilly region forms generally an intermediate tract between the high mountains and the plains already described; but, not unfrequently, it commences at the water's edge, and fills with its undulations the entire s.p.a.ce, leaving not even a strip of lowland. This is especially the case in the central region between Berytus and Arka, opposite the highest portion of the Lebanon; and again in the north between Cape Possidi and Jebili, opposite the more northern part of Bargylus. The hilly region in these places is a broad tract of alternate wooded heights and deep romantic valleys, with streams murmuring amid their shades. Sometimes the hills are cultivated in terraces, on which grow vines and olives, but more often they remain in their pristine condition, clothed with ma.s.ses of tangled underwood.

The mountain ranges, which belong in some measure to the geography of Phoenicia, are four in number--Carmel, Casius, Bargylus, and Lebanon.

Carmel is a long hog-backed ridge, running in almost a straight line from north-west to south-east, from the promontory which forms the western protection of the bay of Acre to El-Ledjun, on the southern verge of the great plain of Esdraelon, a distance of about twenty-two miles. It is a limestone formation, and rises up abruptly from the side of the bay of Acre, with flanks so steep and rugged that the traveller must dismount in order to ascend them,[123] but slopes more gently towards the south, where it is comparatively easy of access. The greatest elevation which it attains is about Lat. 32 4', where it reaches the height of rather more than 1,200 feet; from this it falls gradually as it nears the sh.o.r.e, until at the convent, with which the western extremity is crowned, the height above the sea is no more than 582 feet. In ancient times the whole mountain was thickly wooded,[124]

but at present, though it contains "rocky dells" where there are "thick jungles of copse,"[125] and is covered in places with olive groves and thickets of dwarf oak, yet its appearance is rather that of a park than of a forest, long stretches of gra.s.s alternating with patches of woodland and "shrubberies, thicker than any in Central Palestine," while the larger trees grow in clumps or singly, and there is nowhere, as in Lebanon, any dense growth, or even any considerable grove, of forest trees. But the beauty of the tract is conspicuous; and if Carmel means, as some interpret, a "garden" rather than a "forest," it may be held to well justify its appellation. "The whole mountain-side," says one traveller,[126] "was dressed with blossoms and flowering shrubs and fragrant herbs." "There is not a flower," says another,[127] "that I have seen in Galilee, or on the plains along the coast, that I do not find on Carmel, still the fragrant, lovely mountain that he was of old."

The geological structure of Carmel is, in the main, what is called "the Jura formation," or "the upper oolite"--a soft white limestone, with nodules and veins of flint. At the western extremity, where it overhangs the Mediterranean, are found chalk, and tertiary breccia formed of fragments of chalk and flint. On the north-east of the mountain, beyond the Nahr-el-Mukattah, plutonic rocks appear, breaking through the deposit strata, and forming the beginning of the basalt formation which runs through the plain of Esdraelon to Tabor and the Sea of Galilee.[128] Like most limestone formations, Carmel abounds in caves, which are said to be more than 2,000 in number,[129] and are often of great length and extremely tortuous.

Carmel, the great southern headland of Phoenicia, is balanced in a certain sense by the extreme northern headland of Casius. Mount Casius is, strictly speaking, the termination of a spur from Bargylus; but it has so marked and peculiar a character that it seems ent.i.tled to separate description. Rising up abruptly from the Mediterranean to the height of 5,318 feet, it dominates the entire region in its vicinity, and from the sea forms a landmark that is extraordinarily conspicuous.

Forests of fine trees clothe its flanks, but the lofty summit towers high above them, a bare ma.s.s of rock, known at the present day as Jebel-el-Akra, or "the Bald Mountain." It is formed mainly of the same cretaceous limestone as the other mountains of these parts, and like them has a rounded summit; but rocks of igneous origin enter into its geological structure; and in its vegetation it more resembles the mountain ranges of Taurus and Ama.n.u.s than those of southern Syria and Palestine. On its north-eastern prolongation, which is washed by the Orontes, lay the enchanting pleasure-ground of Daphne, bubbling with fountains, and bright with flowering shrubs, where from a remote antiquity the Syrians held frequent festival to their favourite deity--the "Dea Syra"--the great nature G.o.ddess.

The elevated tract known to the ancients as Bargylus, and to modern geographers as the Ansayrieh or Nasariyeh mountain-region, runs at right angles to the spur terminating in the Mount Casius, and extends from the Orontes near Antioch to the valley of the Eleutherus. This is a distance of not less than a hundred miles. The range forms the western boundary of the lower Coelesyrian valley, which abuts upon it towards the east, while westward it looks down upon the region, partly hill, partly lowland, which may be regarded as const.i.tuting "Northern Phoenicia."

The axis of the range is almost due north and south, but with a slight deflection towards the south-east. Bargylus is not a chain comparable to Lebanon, but still it is a romantic and picturesque region. The lower spurs towards the west are clothed with olive grounds and vineyards, or covered with myrtles and rhododendrons; between them are broad open valleys, productive of tobacco and corn. Higher up "the scenery becomes wild and bold; hill rises to mountain; soft springing green corn gives place to sterner crag, smooth plain to precipitous heights;"[130] and if in the more elevated region the majesty of the cedar is wanting, yet forests of fir and pine abound, and creep up the mountain-side, in places almost to the summit, while here and there bare ma.s.ses of rock protrude themselves, and crag and cliff rise into the clouds that hang about the highest summits. Water abounds throughout the region, which is the parent of numerous streams, as the northern Nahr-el-Kebir, which flows into the sea by Latakia, the Nahr-el-Melk, the Nahr Amrith, the Nahr Kuble, the Nahr-el-Abrath, and many others. From the conformation of the land they have of necessity short courses; but each and all of them spread along their banks a rich verdure and an uncommon fertility.

But the _great_ range of Phoenicia, its glory and its boast is Lebanon. Lebanon, the "White Mountain"[131]--"the Mont Blanc of Palestine"[132]--now known as "the Old White-headed Man"

(Jebel-esh-Sheikh), or "the Mountain of Ice" (Jebel-el-Tilj), was to Phoenicia at once its protection, the source of its greatness, and its crowning beauty. Extended in a continuous line for a distance of above a hundred miles, with an average elevation of from 6,000 to 8,000 feet, and steepest on its eastern side, it formed a wall against which the waves of eastern invasion naturally broke--a bulwark which seemed to say to them, "Thus far shall ye go, and no further." The flood of conquest swept along its eastern flank, down the broad vale of the Buka'a, and then over the hills of Galilee; but its frowning precipices and its lofty crest deterred or baffled the invader, and the smiling region between its summit and the Mediterranean was, in the early times at any rate, but rarely traversed by a hostile army. This western region it was which held those inexhaustible stores of forest trees that supplied Phoenicia with her war s.h.i.+ps and her immense commercial navy; here were the most productive valleys, the vineyards, and the olive grounds, and here too were the streams and rills, the das.h.i.+ng cascades, the lovely dells, and the deep gorges which gave her the palm over all the surrounding countries for variety of picturesque scenery.

The geology of the Lebanon is exceedingly complicated. "While the bulk of the mountain, and all the higher ranges, are without exception limestone of the early cretaceous period, the valleys and gorges are filled with formations of every possible variety, sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous. Down many of them run long streams of trap or basalt; occasionally there are d.y.k.es of porphyry and greenstone, and then patches of sandstone, before the limestone and flint recur."[133]

Some slopes are composed entirely of soft sandstone; many patches are of a hard metallic-sounding trap or porphyry; but the predominant formation is a greasy or powdery limestone, bare often, but sometimes clothed with a soft herbage, or with a thick tangle of shrubs, or with lofty forest trees. The ridge of the mountain is everywhere naked limestone rock, except in the comparatively few places which attain the highest elevation, where it is coated or streaked with snow. Two summits are especially remarkable, that of Jebel Sunnin towards the south, which is a conspicuous object from Beyrout,[134] and is estimated to exceed the height of 9,000 feet,[135] and that of Jebel Mukhmel towards the north, which has been carefully measured and found to fall a very little short of 10,200 feet.[136] The latter, which forms a sort of amphitheatre, circles round and impends over a deep hollow or basin, opening out towards the west, in which rise the chief sources that go to form the romantic stream of the Kadisha. The sides of the basin are bare and rocky, fringed here and there with the rough knolls which mark the deposits of ancient glaciers, the "moraines" of the Lebanon. In this basin stand "the Cedars." It is not indeed true, as was for a long time supposed, that the cedar grove of Jebel Mukhmel is the sole remnant of that primeval cedar-forest which was anciently the glory of the mountain. Cedars exist on Lebanon in six other places at least, if not in more. Near Tannurin, on one of the feeders of the Duweir, a wild gorge is clothed from top to bottom with a forest of trees, untouched by the axe, the haunt of the panther and the bear, which on examination have been found to be all cedars, some of a large size, from fifteen to eighteen feet in girth. They grow in cl.u.s.ters, or scattered singly, in every variety of situation, some clinging to the steep slopes, or gnarled and twisted on the bare hilltops, others sheltered in the recesses of the dell. There are also cedar-groves at B'sherrah; at El Hadith; near Duma, five hours south-west of El Hadith; in one of the glens north of Deir-el-Kamar, at Etnub, and probably in other places.[137] But still "the Cedars" of Jebel Mukhmel are ent.i.tled to pre-eminence over all the rest, both as out-numbering any other cl.u.s.ter, and still more as exceeding all the rest in size and apparent antiquity.

Some of the patriarchs are of enormous girth; even the younger ones have a circ.u.mference of eighteen feet; and the height is such that the birds which dwell among the upper branches are beyond the range of an ordinary fowling-piece.

But it is through the contrasts which it presents that Lebanon has its extraordinary power of attracting and delighting the traveller. Below the upper line of bare and worn rock, streaked in places with snow, and seamed with torrent courses, a region is entered upon where the freshest and softest mountain herbage, the greenest foliage, and the most brilliant flowers alternate with deep dells, tremendous gorges, rocky ravines, and precipices a thousand feet high. Scarcely has the voyager descended from the upper region of naked and rounded rock, when he comes upon "a tremendous chasm--the bare amphitheatre of the upper basin contracts into a valley of about 2,000 feet deep, rent at its bottom into a cleft a thousand feet deeper still, down which dashes a river, buried between these stupendous walls of rock. All above the chasm is terraced as far as the eye can reach with indefatigable industry. Tiny streamlets bound and leap from terrace to terrace, fertilising them as they rush to join the torrent in the abyss. Some of the waterfalls are of great height and of considerable volume. From one spot may be counted no less than seven of these cascades, now das.h.i.+ng in white spray over a cliff, now lost under the shade of trees, soon to reappear over the next shelving rock."[138] Or, to quote from another writer,[139]--"The descent from the summit is gradual, but is everywhere broken by precipices and towering rocks, which time and the elements have chiselled into strange fantastic shapes. Ravines of singular wildness and grandeur furrow the whole mountain-side, looking in many places like huge rents. Here and there, too, bold promontories shoot out, and dip perpendicularly into the bosom of the Mediterranean. The ragged limestone banks are scantily clothed with the evergreen oak, and the sandstone with pines; while every available spot is carefully cultivated. The cultivation is wonderful, and shows what all Syria might be of under a good government. Miniature fields of grain are often seen where one would suppose that the eagles alone, which hover round them, could have planted the seed. Fig-trees cling to the naked rock; vines are trained along narrow ledges; long ranges of mulberries on terraces like steps of stairs cover the more gentle declivities; and dense groves of olives fill up the bottoms of the glens. Hundreds of villages are seen, here built amid labyrinths of rock, there clinging like swallows'

nests to the sides of cliffs, while convents, no less numerous, are perched on the top of every peak. When viewed from the sea on a morning in early spring, Lebanon presents a picture which once seen is never forgotten; but deeper still is the impression left on the mind, when one looks down over its terraced slopes clothed in their gorgeous foliage, and through the vistas of its magnificent glens, on the broad and bright Mediterranean."

The eastern flank of the mountain falls very far short of the western both in area and in beauty. It is a comparatively narrow region, and presents none of the striking features of gorge, ravine, deep dell, and das.h.i.+ng stream which diversify the side that looks westward. The steep slopes are generally bare, the lower portion only being scantily clothed with deciduous oak, for the most part stunted, and with low scrub of juniper and barberry.[140] Towards the north there is an outer barrier, parallel with the main chain, on which follows a tolerably flat and rather bare plain, well watered, and with soft turf in many parts, which gently slopes to the foot of the main ascent, a wall of rock generally half covered with snow, up which winds the rough track whereby travellers reach the summit. Rills of water are not wanting; flowers bloom to the very edge of the snow, and the walnut-tree flourishes in sheltered places to within two or three thousand feet of the summit; but the general character of the tract is bare and bleak; the villages are few; and the terraced cultivation, which adds so much to the beauty of the western side, is wanting. In the southern half of the range the descent is abrupt from the crest of the mountain into the Buka'a, or valley of the Litany, and the aspect of the mountain-side is one of "unrelieved bareness."[141]

There is, however, one beauty at one point on this side of the Lebanon range which is absent from the more favoured western region. On the ascent from Baalbek to the Cedars the traveller comes upon Lake Lemone, a beautiful mountain tarn, without any apparent exit, the only sheet of water in the Lebanon. Lake Lemone is of a long oval shape, about two miles from one end to the other, and is fed by a stream entering at either extremity, that from the north, which comes down from the village of Ainat, being the more important. As the water which comes into the lake cannot be discharged by evaporation, we must suppose some underground outlet,[142] by which it is conveyed, through the limestone, into the Litany.

The eastern side of Lebanon drains entirely into this river, which is the only stream whereto it gives birth. The Litany is the princ.i.p.al of all the Phoenician rivers, for the Orontes must be counted not to Phoenicia but to Syria. It rises from a small pool or lake near Tel Hushben,[143] about six miles to the south-west of the Baalbek ruins.

Springing from this source, which belongs to Antiliba.n.u.s rather than to Lebanon, the Litany shortly receives a large accession to its waters from the opposite side of the valley, and thus augmented flows along the lower Buka'a in a direction which is generally a little west of south, receiving on either side a number of streams and rills from both mountains, and giving out in its turn numerous ca.n.a.ls for irrigation.

As the river descends with numerous windings, but still with the same general course, the valley of the Buka'a contracts more and more, till finally it terminates in a gorge of a most extraordinary character.

Nothing in the conformation of the strata, or in the lie of ground, indicates the coming marvel[144]--the roots of Lebanon and Hermon appear to intermix--and the further progress of the river seems to be barred by a rocky ridge stretching across the valley from east to west, when lo!

suddenly, the ridge is cut, as if by a knife, and a deep and narrow chasm opens in it, down which the stream plunges in a cleft 200 feet deep, and so narrow that in one place it is actually bridged over by ma.s.ses of rock which have fallen from the cliffs above.[145] In the gully below fig-trees and planes, besides many shrubs, find a footing, and the moist walls of rock on either side are hung with ferns of various kinds, among which is conspicuous the delicate and graceful maidenhair. Further down the chasm deepens, first to 1,000 and then to 1,500 feet, "the torrent roars in the gorge, milk-white and swollen often with the melting snow, overhung with semi-tropical oleanders, fig-trees, and oriental planes, while the upper cliffs are clad with northern vegetation, two zones of climate thus being visible at once."[146] Where the gorge is the deepest, opposite the Castle of Belfort (the modern Kulat-esh-Shukif), the river suddenly makes a turn at right angles, altering its course from nearly due south to nearly due west, and cuts through the remaining roots of Lebanon, still at the bottom of a tremendous fissure, and still raging and chafing for a distance of fifteen miles, until at length it debouches on the coast plain, and meanders slowly through meadows to the sea,[147] which it enters about five miles to the north of Tyre. The course of the Litany may be roughly estimated at from seventy to seventy-five miles.

The other streams to which Lebanon gives birth flow either from its northern or its western flank. From the northern flank flows one stream only, the Nahr-el-Kebir or Eleutherus. The course of this stream is short, not much exceeding thirty miles. It rises from several sources at the edge of the Coelesyrian valley, and, receiving affluents from either side, flows westward between Bargylus and Lebanon to the Mediterranean, which it enters between Orthosia (Artousi) and Marathus (Amrith) with a stream, the volume of which is even in the summer-time considerable. In the rainy season it const.i.tutes an important impediment to intercourse, since it frequently sweeps away any bridge which may be thrown across it, and is itself unfordable. Caravans sometimes remain encamped upon its banks for weeks, waiting until the swell has subsided and crossing is no longer dangerous.[148]