I have seen most of the world’s mighty ruins. In the past year I have wandered through the tombs of the Mings outside Mukden, Manchuria; I have stood upon the Temple of Heaven in Peking, and have climbed the great Chinese wall. I have gone through the Temples of Karnak at the hundred-gated city of Thebes far up the Nile; I have taken photographs of the Colossi of Memnon, and have measured the stones of the Pyramids with a two-foot rule. Not long ago I visited the Temple of Boro Boedor in the heart of Java to describe its three miles of unique carvings, and last year I spent some time in the forts of the Moguls at Delhi and wrote of the Taj Mahal and its marvellous beauties. I have also seen Timgad, the excavated city on the edge of the Sahara, and have lately gone through the Colosseum at Rome and inspected the equally imposing amphitheatre at El Djem in the heart of the Tunisian desert. All these are wonderful, but Baalbek is their superior. These ruins have never been so impressive as they are now. For centuries most of them have been as much buried as is Herculaneum, and it was only when the Emperor of Germany made his tour through this part of the world that they began to be brought to the light of day. I have marched in the Kaiser’s footsteps through Palestine and have seen there the churches and other monuments which he had erected. Before he came to Syria he stopped at Constantinople with the Sultan Abdul Hamid, who gave him a permit to do about as he pleased. As the Kaiser travelled he flattered the Mohammedans, the Christians, and the Jews. He was alive to every possibility, and he stamped “Made in Germany” upon every city he visited. In Damascus he laid a golden wreath on the tomb of Saladin, the famous soldier who fought the Crusaders; and about Jerusalem he built hospitals, schools, and a great sanatorium. Here at Baalbek the Sultan gave him permission to do anything he liked. In the Temple of the Sun is a tablet bearing an inscription in German and Arabic testifying his regard for the Sultan and his pleasure at visiting the ruins. Shortly after leaving he sent German scientists, who organized an army of natives and put them to work excavating the temples. The Germans laid down a railroad track for the dirt cars to carry away mountains of earth and débris. As a result of their work and modern machinery for lifting huge stones into place we have at last a view of these most wonderful temples more as they were in their glory.