In The Hills, To The S.W. Of The Town, Just Behind This Quarry,
Are Several Tombs, Excavated In The Rock, Like The Former, But Of Larger
Dimensions.
In following the quarry towards the village of Duris,
numerous natural caverns are met with in the calcareous rocks; I entered
more than a dozen of them, but found no traces of art, except a few
seats or steps rudely cut out.
These caverns serve at present as winter
habitations for the Arabs who pasture their cattle in this district. The
principal quarry was a full half hour to the southward of the town.
The mountains above Baalbec are quite uncultivated and barren, except at
the Ras el Ain, or sources of the river of Baalbec, where a few trees
only remain. This is a delightful place, and is famous amongst the
inhahitants of the adjoining districts for the salubrity of its air and
water. Near the Ain, are the ruins of a church and mosque.
The ruined town of Baalbec contains about seventy Metaweli families, and
twenty-five of Catholic Christians. Amidst its ruins are two handsome
mosques, and a fine bath. The Emir lives in a spacious building called
the Serai. The inhabitants fabricate white cotton cloth like that of
Zahle; they have some dyeing houses, and had, till within a few years,
some tanneries. The men are the artizans here, and not the women. The
property of the people consists chiefly of cows, of which every house
has ten or fifteen, besides goats and sheep. The goats are of a species
not common in other parts of Syria; they have very long ears, large
horns, and long hair, but not silky like that of the goats of Anatolia.
[p.16]The breed of Baalbec mules is much esteemed, and I have seen some
of them worth on the spot £30 to £35. sterling.
October 1st.--After having again visited the ruins, I engaged a man in
the forenoon, to shew me the way to the source of the rivulet called
Djoush [Arabic]. It is in a Wady in the Anti-Libanus, three quarters of
an hour distant from Baalbec. The rivulet was very small, owing to the
remarkable dryness of the season, and was lost in the Wady before it
reached the plain; at other times it flows down to Baalbec and joins the
river, which, after irrigating the gardens and fields round the town,
loses itself in the plain. A little higher in the mountain than the spot
where the water of the Djoush first issues from the spring, is a small
perpendicular hole, through which I descended, not without some danger,
about sixteen feet, into an aqueduct which conveys the water of the
Djoush underground for upwards of one hundred paces. This aqueduct is
six feet high and three feet and a half wide, vaulted above, and covered
with a thick coat of plaister; it is in perfect preservation; the water
in it was about ten inches deep.
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