The Christians Say That The
Santon Was A Patriarch Of Damascus, Who Left His Flock, And Turned
Hermit, And That He Gained Great Reputation Amongst The Turks, Because
Whenever He Prostrated Himself Before The Deity, His Sheep Imitated His
Example.
Katana has a bath, and near it the Sheikh has a good house.
The
villagers cultivate mulberry trees to feed their silk worms, and some
cotton, besides corn. The day after my arrival I engaged two men to shew
me the way to the ruins. We began to cross the lower branches of the
Djebel Essheikh, at the foot of which Katana is situated, and after an
hour and a quarter came to Bir Karme, likewise called El Redhouan, a
spring in a narrow valley. We rode over mountainous ground in the road
to Rasheya, passed another well of
CASTLE OF BOURKUSH.
[p.49]spring water, and at the end of four hours reached Rahle, a
miserable Druse village, half an hour to the right of the road from
Katana to Rasheia. The ruins are to the north of the village, in the
narrow valley of Rahle, and consist principally of a ruined temple,
built of large square stones, of the same calcareous rock used in the
buildings of Baalbec: little else remains than the foundations, which
are twenty paces in breadth, and thirty in length; within the area of
the temple are the foundations of a circular building. Many fragments of
columns are lying about, and a few extremely well formed capitals of the
Ionic order.
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