"One thing is clear, there were baths at Baalbeck. In the elaborately finished bath of Emir Beshir at Ibtedeen, one peculiarity struck me as evidencing their high antiquity in this land. It was the absence of cocks; instead of which simple plugs or clots of cloth were used for the pipes which brought the water into the basins. As the Romans and Greeks used cocks, the art of the bath had not been derived from them, but traced beyond them. Still it was curious to observe these ashes in the midst of Cyclopic blocks. And yet why should not the bath have belonged to the very earliest period of human society? It is sufficiently excellent to be from the beginning." "I remembered that in opening up the pavement of an ancient bath on the western coast of Africa, I had come upon a somewhat similar deposit, in large quantities, under the floor. This was _gazul_, the product of a certain mountain in Morocco, resembling soapstone, but composed of an admixture of silex, alumina, magnesia, and lime, and which has the peculiar property of polishing the skin when rubbed upon it, and so cleaning off the dead epidermis. Being used for this purpose largely in the baths, the grey deposit under the ruin in question is easily accounted for. Might not this same _gazul_, mixed with kissermil, have been the deposit which I took for mortar at Baalbeck?" For the purpose of removing the dead epidermis from the surface of the skin, "four processes have been adopted throughout the families of the human race, and in successive times. The simple, the natural, the first hit upon, was the rubbing down with the ball of the hand, which is still the process used in this country for currying horses of high breed. The three others, of a more refined and, I may say, historical character, are, scraping, rolling, and polishing. The scraping is with the _strigil_, which we know of from the Romans and Greeks, but which is figured on the tombs of Lycia, and the Roman name of which is derived from Mauritania. The rolling is that which we see to-day practised by the Turks. The polishing is with the _gazul_, and practised by the Moors, to whom it is confined, and who alone possess the admirable substance which is used for it. Now, if _gazul_ was used by the early inhabitants of Baalbeck, their bathing process belonged to the last of these systems, and they carried on a traffic with Morocco."