While we were looking toward Mount Hermon, whose conical summit rose from behind the southern horizon, the hot, shimmering air began to arrange itself in horizontal layers of varying density, and before our wondering eyes there grew a picture of cool and shady comfort. Four or five miles away a grove of date-palms stood beside a beautiful blue lake in which were a number of little islands, each with its cluster of bushes or its group of trees; and, just beyond the islands, the rippling water laved the steep sides of Mount Hermon. It was a cheering sight for the tired traveler. This was no freak of an imagination crazed by privation and exhaustion. Everything was as clear-cut and distinct as were the temples of Baalbek. We knew very well that there was no lake in the Bikaʿ and that Mount Hermon was not within fifty miles of where it seemed to be; yet we agreed upon every detail of the wonderful mirage. We counted the wooded islets; we pointed out to each other the beauty of the shrubbery and the symmetry of the waving palm trees; we remarked upon the sharp reflections of the branches in the clear water. Then, while we looked, the islands began to swim around, the bushes shrank together, the trees shifted their positions, the blue water faded into a misty white, old Hermon receded far into the background—and soon all that was left were two or three dusty palms bowing listlessly over the dry, brown earth in the sizzling heat. I had always thought of Baalbek as a magnificent ruin in the midst of a wilderness; at best, I expected to find huddled beneath the temples a tiny hamlet like that at Palmyra. But as we came nearer to the spot of green about the columns, it grew larger and larger, and finally opened out into a prosperous-looking town of five thousand inhabitants besides, as we discovered later, a garrison of Turkish soldiers and a host of summer visitors. The bazaars were busy and noisy, and the half-dozen hotels were filled with the cream of Syrian society. Gay young prodigals from Beirut clattered recklessly along on blooded mares, or lolled back in rickety barouches, talking French to pretty girls whose silk dresses were so nearly correct that our masculine eyes could not detect just what was the matter with them.