It is impossible to give pictures of the ruins and of the mighty temples as they were in their wonderful beauty. The ruins cover more than ten acres, and the Great Temple alone was about three hundred feet long by one hundred and sixty feet wide. It had a roof upheld by Corinthian columns only, six of which are now standing. These columns are eighty feet high and twenty-two feet in circumference. In entering the temples I went up a gigantic staircase, a great part of which has been destroyed, and came into what is known as the forecourt, which is about two hundred feet wide, and the floor of which was paved with mosaic. We next went through another court, known as the Court of the Altar, which must cover five or six acres. It is a mass of marble and granite, gigantic columns and delicate carvings being thrown helter-skelter together. Beyond this and up a series of steps are the ruins of the Great Temple itself. At the left is the exquisite Temple of Bacchus, and everywhere are great shafts of marble so wonderfully carved that they would be treasures in any museum. [Illustration: The nomadic Bedouins live in brown tents so low that the people have to stoop to get into them. They camp wherever they find good grazing for their stock] [Illustration: The desolation of the once heavily wooded mountains of Lebanon is emphasized by the lonely grove of cedars. This grove, far up among the snows, is protected by a wall and contains four hundred very old trees] All this, however, gives no idea of the construction. People wonder how the mighty stones of the Pyramids were put into place, and books have been written to show how the obelisks were taken from the quarries to the sites where they were erected as monuments. The building of the temples of Baalbek was a far greater mechanical triumph. The materials, including columns weighing hundreds of tons, had to be brought up the steep Lebanon Mountains and carried over passes higher than the tops of the Alleghanies. There is granite here which came from far up the Nile; there are marbles from Greece, and great limestone blocks from the quarries near by. The temple has walls sixty feet high, and the mighty columns—seven feet in diameter, and, including the pedestals and capitals, as tall as an eight-story building—rest upon a platform which is more than fifty feet high. These mighty pillars are put up in three sections each twenty feet or more in height and seven feet in diameter. They are so put together that each column looks like one solid block.