[P.26] [Arabic], From A Small Ruined Tower.

It is three or four hours in length, and two in breadth.

In the spring the Arabs Abid, Turkmans, and Kourdines, here pasture their cattle. These Kourdines bring annually into Syria from twenty to thirty thousand sheep, from the mountains of Kourdistan; the greater part of which are consumed by Aleppo, Damascus, and the mountains, as Syria does not produce a sufficient number for its inhabitants. The Kourd sheep are larger than those of Syria, but their flesh is less esteemed. The Kourd sheep-dealers first visit with their flocks Aleppo, then Hama, Homs, and Baalbec; and what they do not sell on the road, they bring to pasture at Watty el Bordj, whither the people of Zahle, Deir el Kammar, and other towns in the mountains repair, and buy up thousands of them, which they afterwards sell in retail to the peasants of the mountains.

They buy them for ready money at twenty to thirty piastres a head, and sell them two months afterwards at thirty to forty. The mountaineers of the Druse and Maronite districts breed very few sheep, and very seldom eat animal food. On the approach of their respective great festivals, (Christmas with the Maronites, and Ramadan with the Druses) each head of a family kills one or two sheep; during the rest of the year, he feeds his people on Borgul, with occasionally some old cow's, or goat's flesh. It is only in the largest of the mountain towns of the Druses and Maronites that flesh is brought daily to market.

There are no springs or water in the Watty el Bordj; but the melting of the snow in the spring affords drink for men and cattle, and snow water is often found during the greater part of the summer in some funnel- shaped holes formed in the ground by the snow. At the time I passed no water was any where to be found. In many places the snow remains throughout the year; but this year none was left, not even on the summits of the mountain, [p.27] except in a few spots on the northern declivity of the Libanus towards the district of Akkar. Watty el Bordj affords excellent pasturage; in many spots it is overgrown with trees, mostly oaks, and the barbery is also very frequent. We started partridges at every step. Our route lay generally S.W. by S.

Four hours from Ain Bahr, we entered the mountain, a part of which is considered to belong to Kesrouan. It is completely stony and rocky, and I found some calcareous spath. I shall here remark that the whole of the mountain from Zahle to Belad Akkar is by the country people comprehended under the general name of Djurd Baalbec, Djurd meaning, in the northern Arabic dialect, a rocky mountain.

Crossing this part of the mountain Sannin for two hours, we came to a spring called Ain Naena, from whence another road leads down north- eastwards, into the territory of Baalbec.

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