Upon the mainland, adjacent to the island, had stood for many centuries another city, which the people distinguished by the name of Old Tyre. A hundred and fifty years before, its glory had departed, when it fell conquered by the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar. The dangers of its exposed position on the mainland, as compared with the safety of the island which the Great Sea guarded as a mighty moat, led the Phoenicians to neglect the rebuilding of the old city. Its broken walls, fifteen miles in circuit, were filled with the débris of once proud temples and stately palaces. A few buildings of straggling architecture had been hastily reconstructed with the blocks of stone that made the graceful lines of an ancient mart or fortress. Shanties stood upon the dismantled foundations, and scattered among the ruins were the black tents of traders. A new market-place had been opened close to the shore, where the many caravans that crossed the Lebanons from Damascus exchanged their rich loads for those brought over the sea. One of the most prominent ruins in Old Tyre was that of an ancient temple of Baal. Superstitious reverence for the place had prevented its use as a quarry, the fate of so many other ruins. Huge blocks of stone, such as the Phoenician builders were famous for using in their gigantic temples, loaded the ground; and concealed beneath them were subterranean passage-ways, which the priests of old had used in going from one part of the sacred edifice to another, unseen by the worshippers. These were now the abode of jackals, whose domiciles were uninvaded except by the flitting of the bats and the gliding of serpents through the narrower crevices. On the plaza, which had been the court of the old temple, and which was largely unencumbered with débris, rose a dilapidated image of Baal-Moloch.