Baalbek—the six great columns 183 Baalbek—the stone in the quarry 198 Hama—the Orontes River 199 MAPS AND PLANS The railway from Beirut to Damascus 62 Cross-section of Syria 64 The Hauran 74 The temples of Baalbek 194 SYRIA THE LAND OF LEBANON _Syria, The Land of Lebanon_ CHAPTER I THE WHITE MOUNTAIN Far off on the eastern horizon the thin haze of an October dawn gently blended into denser masses of silvery white, which rose like dream mountains above the edge of the placid azure sea. The soft, ethereal shapes did not change their outlines, however, as clouds do; and, as the steamer drew nearer to them, the rounded forms gradually took on an appearance of bulk and solidity. These were no mere piles of morning mist, but the massive shoulders of the ancient, famous, glorious range whose strange silvery tint when viewed from afar caused it long, long ago to be called _Lebanon_—the “White Mountain.” As we approached the shore, the sun rose into a sky of brighter blue than ever domed Italian seas, and great waves of color swept downward over the round white mountainsides. I have traveled since in many lands; I know the beauty of Amalfi’s cliffs, the rich tints of the southern coast of Spain, the mystic alpenglow on the snow-clad peaks of Switzerland and the delicate opalescence of the Isles of Greece; but I have never seen—I never expect to see—another glory of earth which can compare with the wondrous coloring of the mountains of Lebanon. We watched floods of red and orange sweep across the lofty summits and then brighten into crowns of mellow gold. We looked into gorges tinged with a purple so rich and deep that the color itself seemed almost a tangible thing. Nearer still we drew, and at the foot of the mountains there came into view dark forests of evergreen and broad, sloping orchards set here and there with tiny villages of shining white. Then there appeared long lines of silvery surf and yellow sand; and we skirted the northern edge of a rock-bound promontory to the crowded harbor of Beirut. * * * * * The wording of the Old Testament might lead one to infer that Lebanon is a single mountain, and the modern Syrians also familiarly refer to it as _ej-Jebel_—“The Mountain.” It is not, however, an isolated peak, but an entire range, which begins at the northern border of Palestine and stretches for a hundred miles along the easternmost shore of the Mediterranean. The narrow coastal plain cannot be distinguished at a distance. Straight out of the water the thousand summits rise in ever loftier ranks up to the level profile of the central ridge, two miles above the sea.