I thought in unnecessary, therefore, to stop
any longer at Souf, and left it the same evening, in order to visit
Djebel Adjeloun. Our road lay W.N.W. up a mountain, through a thick
forest of oak trees. In three quarters of an hour from Souf we reached
the summit of the mountain, which forms the frontier between the
district of Moerad and the Djebel Adjeloun. This is the thickest forest
I had yet seen in
RABBAD.
[p.266]Syria, where the term forest ([Arabic] or [Arabic]) is often
applied to places in which the trees grow at twenty paces from each
other. In an hour and a half we came to the village Ain Djenne [Arabic],
in a fertile valley called Wady Djenne, at the extremity of which
several springs issue from under the rock.
May 3d.--There are several christian families at Ain Djenne. In the
neighbouring mountain are numerous caverns; and distant half an hour, is
the ruined village of Mar Elias. When enquiring for ruins, which might
answer to those of Capitolias, I had been referred to this place, no
person in these mountains having knowledge of any other ruins. An olive
plantation furnishes the principal means of subsistence to the eighty
families who inhabit the village of Ain Djenne.
