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Updated: June 23, 2025
At noon we camped three hours and took luncheon at Mekseh, near the junction of the Lebanon Mountains and the Jebel el Kuneiyiseh, and looked down into the immense, level, garden-like Valley of Lebanon. To-night we are camping near the same valley, and have a very wide sweep of it in view. We can see the long, whale-backed ridge of Mount Hermon projecting above the eastern hills.
As I climbed the rugged slopes of Jebel Surgham leading my horse, I heard a mighty rumbling as of tempestuous rollers and surf bearing down upon a rock-bound shore. When I had gone but a few strides farther there burst upon my sight a moving, undulating plain of men, flecked with banners and glistening steel. Who should count them? They were compact, not to be numbered.
Then came Vandals and Byzantines, who gradually grew too weak to resist the floods of plundering Arab nomads; the rich merchants fled, their palaces fell to ruins; the town became a collection of mud huts inhabited by poor cultivators who lived in terror of the neighbouring Hammama tribe of true Arabs, that actually forbade them to walk beyond the limits of the Jebel Assalah a couple of miles distant.
The word is no doubt the ancient representative of the modern Kurdistan, and means a country in which Kurds dwelt. Now Kurds seem to have been at one time the chief inhabitants of the Mons Masius, the modern Jebel Kara j ah Dagh and Jebel Tur, which was thence called Oordyene, Gordyene, or the Gordisean mountain chain.
From Baalbek, the city of "Baal of the Bek'a," the traveller makes his way across Lebanon, and under the snows of Jebel Sannîn nearly 9000 feet in height to the old Phoenician city of Beyrout. Beyrout is already mentioned in the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna under the name of Beruta or Beruna, "the cisterns."
At noon we camped three hours and took luncheon at Mekseh, near the junction of the Lebanon Mountains and the Jebel el Kuneiyiseh, and looked down into the immense, level, garden-like Valley of Lebanon. To-night we are camping near the same valley, and have a very wide sweep of it in view. We can see the long, whale-backed ridge of Mount Hermon projecting above the eastern hills.
We have noted the accidents of the latter as far as Dumayghah Cove, and now we descry in the offing the misty forms how small they look! of the Jebel el-Ward; the Jibal el-Safhah; the two blocks, south of the Wady Hamz, known as the Jibal el-Ral; and their neighbours still included in the Tihamat-Balawiyyah.
"It wasn't bad." Last summer Ethne had been free. If Willoughby had come home with his good news instead of shooting ibex on Jebel Araft, it would have made all the difference in her life, and the cry was loud at her heart, "Why didn't you come?" But outwardly she gave no sign of the irreparable harm which Willoughby's delay had brought about.
Wave followed wave of men, they surged together, inviting greater disaster, but always striving to get nearer us. Their front had covered the whole slopes of Jebel Surgham and their left overlapped part of the Khalifa's right. Death was reaping a gigantic harvest. Hecatombs of slain were being spread everywhere in front. The fight was terrible, the slaughter dreadful.
To the right rose the Jibal el-Tihamah, over whose nearer brown heights appeared the pale blue peaks of Jebel Sharr and its southern neighbour, Jebel Sa'luwwah. At nine a.m. we turned abruptly eastward up the Wady el-Sulaysalah, whose head falls sharply from the Shafah range.
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