The surprising force of the water, which according to the great historian of Rome sustained the weight even of those who had not learned to buoy themselves up by art, was in a great measure found to exist, and subsequent experiments appear to support the opinion. Returning thence to Jerusalem, and visiting Bethlehem and the other holy places in its vicinity, they at length departed on the 15th of April for Nazareth, which they found to be an inconsiderable village on the summit of a hill. Their road then lay through their former track until they struck off to the right through a defile of Mount Lebanon, entered the valley of Bocat, and emerged through a gorge of Anti-Libanus into the plain of Damascus, which, watered by “Abana and Pharphar, lucid streams,” unfolded itself before the eye in all that voluptuous beauty glittering in a transparent atmosphere which intoxicated the soul of the Arabian prophet, and caused him to pronounce it too generative of delight. The somewhat colder imagination of Maundrell was strongly moved by the view of this incomparable landscape. The City of the Sun (for such is the signification of its oriental name) lifted up its gilded domes, slender minarets, and tapering kiosks amid a forest of deep verdure; while gardens luxuriant in beauty, and wafting gales of the richest fragrance through the air, covered the plain for thirty miles around the city. The interior of the city was greatly inferior to its environs, and disappointed the traveller. From Damascus, where they saw the Syrian caravan, commanded by the Pasha of Tripoli, and consisting of an army of pilgrims mounted on camels and quaintly-caparisoned horses, depart for Mecca, they proceeded to Baalbec, where they arrived on the 5th of May. The magnificent ruins of this city were then far less dilapidated than they are at present, and called forth a corresponding degree of admiration from the travellers. The site of Baalbec, on the cool side of a valley, between two lofty ridges of mountains, is highly salubrious and beautiful; and the creations of art which formerly adorned it were no way inferior (and this is the highest praise the works of man can receive!) to the beauties which nature eternally reproduces in those delicious regions. Time and the Ottomans, however, have shown that they are less durable.