Western Reserve chronicle. [volume] (Warren, Ohio) 1855-1921, 1871-08-02
THE OLDEST CITY IN THE WORLD.
p.maneus and the Ruins Of Baalbek.


tits never well TO expect too much
of place of which one has only read, A.,
and found this out anew on going
through the streets of Damascus, the
Oldest city in the world. My antici-
pations were altogether too rosy. /
thought everything oriental and pecu-
liar would be or q grander scale than
in any other city L visited; thai l
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 cIowding between the walls OF
adjacent buildings, that l could meet
with ancient Inscriptions and other
vestiges of antiquity. I had a ride
around the remaining portions of the
thick old walls, and these gave me a
better idea of the former grandeur
and strength of Damascus than any
thing else. The gate of the 'street
called Straight" may be the very
same one through which Paul enter
ed, for it certainly looks old enough,
and portion of the contiguous wall
/ is dilapidated but the street itself,
though still remarkably straight for
I the East, is quite modern in appear
ance, and is about the best bazaar /
have met with anywhere. For silk
stuffs and silverware, Damascus has
no equal in the Eastern countries, and
for the remarkable contrast between
luxuriant vegetation and a leafiess
desert surrounding a city, there is
nowhere an approach to it. l shall
never forget the desolate road on skirt
ing the snow-banks of Hermon, and
then descending into a country whose
black basaltic rocks seem to have been
scattered by some cyclopean army,
and finally reaching a vast plain of
unrelieved aridity and sterilty-a des-
ert in the most unqualified sense-and
then seeing far off in the distance a
single green spot in the horizon,
which, after five hours steady travel !
ling, / found to be green and fragant, |
and most welcome Damascus. 1t is
the ALBANIA and Pharpar that give eX-
istencs 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 a fort /
night as Pompeii. The murmur of |
fountains falls constantly on your /
ears, and in Demetri's hotel, where /
my windows were darkened by jas
mine and other fragrant parasites,
the music of cheerful streams in the /
court was the last sound on my ears
at night and the first in the morning.
To 90 from Damascus to Baalbek,
and thence TO Beirut, requires five
days of hard horseback work, If one
prefers to see the country and the
source of the ALBANIA, instead of short
ening the tour by making 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 eriti-
cal eye of the professional architect,
but in splendor and diminsions they
are without a rival. l could hardly
believe the books and my own eyes
as 1 sat outside the ancient moat of
the Great Temple, and looked upon
single stones, forming part of the
original substructure, which were
sixty-three feet long and thirteen feet
broad. and had been raised over twen
ty feet. Who can tell their weight?
This temple was dedicated to Baal or
Jupiter, and belongs to the Corinthian
style the cOlumns-fifty-fOur in all
are seventy-five feet high, and over
their capitals rises an entablature
the sun, or Apollo, is pretty COM ]
plete, and is still the most perfect re-
mains of art in Syria. l could see
where the altar used to stand, and {
count the 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 key
stone of the Intel has fallen two feet !
from its original position, and hangs
by only slender hold, just as it has
done ever since the earthquake OF
1853. 1 could not stand under the ,
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 a small COM :
pass, and the longer one dwells upon
them, the more bewildered he be- s
comes by their splendor. 1 climed to a
the very top of some of the highest \
walls, CROPPED through the subterra- I
mean halls, looked out from broken a
arches in the snowy and ever fresh q
ranges of Lebanon and Anti-Leba-
non, between which lies the great
valley of Celo-Syria; stopped here :
and there 70 examine some beautiful 4
that obstFucted the path =
way and was half Overgrown by net =
les, and did not wonder that right a
,ous God had allowed all this splendor :,
IF marble and granite to fall-the
most of it-intO a confused mass by
and war, because it was
he seat of an idolatry as blind and {
corrupt as that of Memphis, Babylon, o
,r Nineveh. Some traveller had ap- q
marked, in charcoal, just v
where the great idOlatrOus altar had Il
TODD in the temple of the sun, the D
words, of which the chaos of ruins ii
upplied the comment: "The idols v
lie Shall utterly abOlish,n That night l.
We pitched our tent within the enelO- 4
ure of the Great Temple, with the il
mighty ruins all around us. Nosound I,
# idolatrOus orgies broke upon the n
ar nothing but the innocent brawl h
f jackals in search Of food, and the h
occasional neighing of our jaded ii
lorses. The moon was. in the full, a