The Cecil Whig., 1871-08-05
Damascus and the Ruins of Baalbek.
BY DIR. HURST.

found this out anew on going through the
streets of Damascus, the oldest city in The
world. My anticipations were altogether
too rosy. I thought everything oriental
and peculiar would be on grander scale
than in any other city I had visited that
| could meet the old and the new in more
happy harmony than anywhere else. But,
to my surprise, the new had pushed out
the old and it was only by ascending the
roofs of houses and crowding between the
walls of adjacent buildings, that 1 could
meet with ancient inscriptions and other
vestiges of antiquity. l had a ride around
the remaining portions of the thick old
walls, and these gave me better idea of
the former grandeur and strength of Da-
mascus than anything else. The gate of
"the street called Straight" " may be the
very same one through which Paul entered,
for it certainly looks old enough, and por-
tion of the contiguous wall is dilapidated !;
but the street itself, though still remarka-
bly, straight for the East, is quite modern
in appearance, and is about the best bazaar
l have met with anywhere. For silk stuffs
and silverware, Damascus has no equal in
the Eastern countries, and for the remark
able contrast between luxuriant vegetation
and leatless desert surrounding a city,
there is nowhere an approach to it. shall
never forget the desolate road on skirting
the snow banks of Hermon, and then
descending into country whose black
basaltic rocks seemed to have been scattered
by some cyclopean army, and finally reach
ing vast plain of unrelieved aridity and
sterility-a desert in the most unqualified
sense-and then seeing far off in the dis
tance single green spot in the horizon,
which, after five hours steady travelling,
found to be green and fragrant, and most
welcome Damascus. 1t is the ALBANIA and
Pharpar, that give existence and beauty to
this city, just as the Nile gives to Egypt all
its life. Let those two rivers stop flowing,
and Damascus would be as dead in fort
night as Pompeii. The murmur of foun-
tains falls constantly on your ears and in
Demetri's hotel, where my windows were
darl1ened by jasmine and other fragrant
parasites, the music Of cheerful streams in
the court was the last sound OH my ears at
night and the first in the morning.
To go from Damascus to Baalbek, and
thence to Beirut, requires five days of hard
horseback work, if one prefer to see the
country and the source of the ALBANIA,
instead of shortening the tour by max
ing use of the direct French stage-line to
Beirut. The ruins of Baalbek stand among
the very grandest of all the remains of
Grecian architecture. The style hardly
belongs to the very purest, they say, when
measured by the critical eye of the profess
sional architect, but in splendor and dimen-
sions they are without rival. I could
hardly believe the books and my own eyes
as | sat outside the ancient moat of the
Great Temple, and looked upon the single
stones, forming part of the original struc-
ture, which were sixty-three feet long and
thirteen feet broad, and had been raised
over 20 feet. Who can tell their weight :?
This temple was dedicated to Baal or Jupi-
ter, and belongs to the Corinthian style ;
the columns-ffty four in all-are seventy
an entablature fourteen feet more. The
Temple of the Sun, or Apollo, is pretty
complete, and is still the most perfect re-
mains of art in Syria. l could see where
1,a oil 70 o,,l =
inches where the statues of the gods had
been placed, and here we Christians had
come to see the ruinous perfection. The
great portal is still entire, but the massive
from its original position, and hangs by
only a slender hold, just as it has done ever
since the earthquake of 1859. l could not
stand under the threatening mass without
a shudder. This keystone is of many tons
weight, and on its under-side is sculptured
(; great eagle, with caduceus in his talons
and garlands streaming from his beak.
These ruins lie within small compass,
and the longer one dwells upon them, the
more bewildered he becomes by their splen-
dor. climbed to the very top of some of
the highest walls, groped through the sub
terranean halls, looked out from broken
arches in the snowy and ever fresh ranges
of Lebanon and Anti Lebanon, between
which lies the great valley of C9lo-Syria !;
stopped here and there to examine some
beautiful fragments that obstructed the
pathway and was half overgrown by net
ties, and did not wonder that a righteous
God had allowed all this splendor of mar
ble and granite to fall-the most of it
into confused mass by earthquake and
war, because it was the seat of an idolatry
as blind and corrupt as that of Memphis,
Babylon, OF Nineveh. Some traveller had
appropriat ely marked, in charcoal, just
where the great idolatrous altar had stood
in the temple of the sun, the words, of
which the chaos of ruin supplied the COM
ment: "The idols He shall utterly abol-
isl.'' That night we pitched our tent
within the enclosure Of the Great Temple,
with the mighty ruins all around us. No
sound of idolatrous orgies broke upon the
ear; nothing but the innocent brawl of
jackals in search of food, and the occa-
sional neighing of our jaded horses. The
moon was in the full, and shone brightly
over the little world Of departed glory
We again explored some of the main points
of interest, and in the night, quite too
late for comfortable and undisturbed rest,
we sought repose on our narrow camp beds.
The next morning we broke camp early,
and were soon on the way down the valley.
The only object of interest on the way was
the sticking of some of our horses in the
mire, produced by the melting SHOWS, and
| the passing of the alleged tomb of Noah
which, 10y the way, is two hundred and ten
feet long. 1t is nothius in the world but
all old acqueduct.-Methodist.
There are at least fifty cases of low
fever in the borough of West Chester and
the immediate vicinity at the present time.
| The unusual unhealthineSs of the place is
attributed to the numerous rains, which
have been Immediately followed by intense