Page:Syria, the land of Lebanon (1914).djvu/232

 CHAPTER XIII

THE GIANT STONES OF BAALBEK

HE most impressive of all the ancient temples of Syria can now be reached by a comfortable railway journey from either Damascus or Beirut. But this way the traveler comes upon the ruins too quickly to appreciate adequately their splendid situation and marvelous size. I shall always be thankful that, on my first visit to Baalbek, I approached it very slowly as I rode from our camp among the cedars of Lebanon. For the longer you look at these temples and the greater the distance from which you behold them, the more fully do you realize that whatever race first built a shrine here chose the spot which, of all their land, had the largest, noblest setting for a sanctuary; and the better also do you understand that these structures had to be made unique in their grandeur because anything less imposing would have seemed paltry in comparison with the surrounding glories of nature.

Where the Bika' is highest and widest and most fertile, on a foothill of Anti-Lebanon which projects far enough to give a commanding outlook in all Rh