BEAUTIES OF LEBANON

Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20734, 18 February 1939, Page 15 (Supplement)

BEAUTIES OF LEBANON

Camping Near the Cedars Mulberry and Fig Groves

(Harriet Martineau in “ Eastern Life, Present and Past.”)

THE PASSAGE of the Lebanon was very agreeable,—the path winding among woodland,—(chiefly holly, with some oak), —and over a profusion of wild flowers.—the yellow jessamine abounding as much'u. We rode up steep ascents, and down to shallow valleys, so that we were on the whole rapidly mounting. . . . Between us and the highest terraces—terraces which reached an incredible height —stretched snowy and barren slopes. Beshirai, on an elevated platform, bristling with cypresses, and showing lines of flat roofs, was far below us; and so was Eden on its hill—Eden, which is perched so high, that the inhabitants live in it only during the spring and summer months. A few step further, and we saw the cedars—a patch of dark wood at the base of the slope to our right—just below the verge cf the snow*. . . . The valley, which opens about half an hour before Eden, is gloriously beautiful. Wherever we looked there were red precipices. marvellously terraced, and white waterfalls, and capricious green slopes, rnd streams rushing in conduits or natural

channels; and groves of mulberry and fig, about the little villages, perched in apparently inaccessible places. Eden in a Maronite village, crowded with churches; and the flat roofs of its houses were already occupied with trays of silk-worms. We taw' it to no advantage, it being enveloped in mist this evening, and damp and dreary with mountain rain in the morning. We encamped on a stretch of grass near a large % walnut-tree, from whose old roots a stream leaped in a pre.tty waterfall. The people were very handsome; and we saw a good deal of them, as they gathered about us, and lost no opportunity of peeping into the tents. When the wind went down in the evening, I stole out, and sat on a wall in the shadow, to see what I could of this new world. The handsome women, with the booming fillet on the forehead, were talking in the light of the fires; the last gust had parted the mists, and the depths of the gorges b«-gan to appear, while two glorious planets were going ilowu behind a western ridge; tne lighted tents looked warm under the spreading wainut-trees; and the guard were patrolling on the outskirts of the camp.