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Updated: June 17, 2025
It is useless to attempt a detailed description of this architecture; and it is so unlike anything else in the world, that, like Karnak and Baalbec, those only know the Alhambra who see it. When you can weave stone, and hang your halls with marble tapestry, you may rival it. It is nothing to me that these ornaments are stucco; to sculpture them in marble is only the work of the hands.
But the Arab, Son of the Sand, told me that for my life's sake I must be silent and keep myself close veiled and disguised even from you until we reached Jerusalem, lest perhaps if they knew me the embassy might refuse escort to the princess of Baalbec and niece of Saladin, or even give me up to him.
The Maronite monk, who has charge of a little stone chapel standing in the midst, moves about like a shade, and, not before you are ready to leave, brings his book for you to register your name therein, I was surprised to find how few of the crowd that annually overrun Syria reach the Cedars, which, after Baalbec, are the finest remains of antiquity in the whole country.
The long velvety tread of the camel, the song of the camel-driver, the monotonous chant of the river-man, with fingers mechanically falling on his little drum, the cry of the eagle of the Libyan Hills, the lap of the heavy waters of the Dead Sea down by Jericho, the battle-call of the Druses beyond Damascus, the lonely gigantic figures at the mouth of the temple of Abou Simbel, looking out with the eternal question to the unanswering desert, the delicate ruins of moonlit Baalbec, with the snow mountains hovering above, the green oases, and the deep wells where the caravans lay down in peace all these were pouring their influences on his mind in the little Quaker village of Hamley where life was so bare, so grave.
There is a rock in the quarry at Baalbec that is larger than any of those in the ruins, although it was never entirely cut out, the length of which is sixty-eight feet, and the width varies from about thirteen feet at one end to seventeen feet at the other. It is about fourteen feet thick, and the estimated weight is fifteen hundred tons.
Moreover that in the eyes of all men her dignity might be worthy of her high blood and fate by his decree he created her, the niece whom he had never seen, Princess of Baalbec, with great possessions a rule that her grandfather, Ayoub, and her uncle, Izzeddin, had held before her.
One might swear that all the John Smiths and George Wilkinsons, and all the other pitiful nobodies between Kingdom Come and Baalbec would inscribe their poor little names upon the walls of Baalbec's magnificent ruins, and would add the town, the county and the State they came from and swearing thus, be infallibly correct.
But it is all over now. We are cut up into parties of six or eight, and by this time are scattered far and wide. Ours is the only one, however, that is venturing on what is called "the long trip" that is, out into Syria, by Baalbec to Damascus, and thence down through the full length of Palestine.
I thanked God, who had led me out of a darkness more terrible than that of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and while my feet strayed among the flowery meadows of Lebanon, my heart walked on the Delectable Hills of His Mercy. By the middle of the afternoon, we reached Baalbec.
"You are not in earnest? you are not going to quit your home?" cried Beulah, in a broken, unsteady tone. "Yes going into the far East; to the ruined altars of Baalbec; to Meroe, to Tartary, India, China, and only Fate knows where else. Perhaps find a cool Nebo in some Himalayan range. Going? Yes. Did you suppose I meant only to operate on your sympathies? I know you too well.
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