The Great Temple is better preserved; its potent walls, and twenty-three of its Corinthian columns, still stand. There is no wood about the building. Even its vaulted roof, one hundred feet above you, is marble. The under side of this marble roof is beautifully chiseled. As one views it with the natural eye, it look like delicate lace work; but by the aid of field glasses one can trace the designs of the artist, and see that “there is method in his madness.” One can see men, animals, leaves, flowers and fruits delicately carved in the high lifted stone. One sees, or fancies he sees, oaks and acorns, moons and mares, men, mice and monkeys, doves, dogs and donkeys, bulls, boars and bears, pigs, ‘possums and puppies, boys and bonnets, ladies and lizards, all beautifully carved and sweetly blended one with the other. “‘Tis a vision, ‘tis an anthem sung in stone, a poem writ in marble.” [Illustration: RUINS OF BAALBEK.] But probably the thing that most impresses one about the ruins of Baalbek is the enormous size of the stones used in its buildings. I have never seen or read of such stones as were used in building these temples. Many of them are as large as one of our ordinary freight cars. Three of these stones, lying end to end in the walls of the temple, measure two hundred and ten feet. I go to the quarry, half a mile away, from which these colossal stones were taken. There I find a companion stone to those in the buildings. It is fourteen feet high, seventeen feet broad and seventy-one feet long. Who ever heard of such stones being handled! Two six mule teams might be driven side by side on the stone, and there would be room for a foot path on either side the wagons. No pigmies they—those builders of Baalbek. A race of giants or of gods must have handled these stones! No one knows when, how, or by whom these temples were built. We know this, however, they were built, not for an age, but for all time. CHAPTER XXVII. DAMASCUS. A Beautiful Valley—Flowing Rivers—Mohammed at Damascus—Garden of God—Paul at Damascus—Mohammedan at Prayer—Valley More Beautiful—Damascus Exclusively Oriental—Quaint Architecture—”Often in Wooden Houses Golden Rooms we Find”—Narrow Streets—Industrious People—Shoe Bazaars—Manufacturing Silk by hand—Fanatical Merchants—“Christian Dogs”—Cabinet-Making—Furniture Inlaid with Pearl—Camel Markets—A Progenitor of the Mule—Machinery Unknown—Ignorance Stalks Abroad—Fanatical Arabs—A Massacre—The Governor Gives the Signal—Christians Killed—French Army—Abraham Our Guide—Brained before Reaching the Post-Office—Warned not to Look at the Women—Johnson’s Regret—Vailed Women—Johnson’s Explanation.