About an hour’s journey from Tripoli there is a very old pool of sacred fish, references to which are found in works of travel as early as the sixth century. According to the present tradition, the souls of soldiers who have died fighting for Islam are reincarnated in these fish. The Moslems accordingly hold them in the greatest reverence; and if anyone, particularly if a Christian, should harm them, he would almost certainly be torn to pieces by an infuriated mob. While thousands of men and women in the neighboring villages may be suffering the pangs of hunger, wealthy zealots will buy great piles of bread for the fish; often, indeed, they provide in their wills for a certain number of loaves to be thrown each week into the pool. The fish, which are about a foot in length, are fat and bloated as a consequence of this over-feeding, and are unspeakably ugly in form and color. We estimated that there were between four and five thousand of them in the little pool; and it was a sight not soon to be forgotten, as they crowded after the crumbs which we threw them, pushing and fighting so that they were often forced quite out of their element and for many square yards the water was completely hidden by the loathsome, wriggling mass. After eight hours’ drive along the valley that leads from Tripoli into the interior, a sudden turn of the road brought into full view the great plain of northeastern Syria. We were entering this through a break in its western wall, the pass which divides Lebanon from the Nusairiyeh Range, inhabited by its cruel, half-pagan tribes. At our right, the southern margin of the plain was distinctly marked by the abrupt ending of Anti-Lebanon and of the nearer Bikaʿ. The place where the central valley of Syria opens suddenly to the broad expanse of wheat country was known of old as the “Entering In of Hamath,” and was the northernmost point to which the Kingdom of Israel ever extended.[57] At the left, low hills rise slowly up to the horizon; in front, the plain rolls out to the unseen desert and the ruined palaces of Palmyra.