unpleasant idea rankles in our imagination. We dream of nothing but reptiles. One of our party declares he has found one in his bed, and his bed touches mine! I all but feel myself stung. Everything creeps and crawls around me. It is a possession! Wretched beasts! or rather, wretched book to create them in our minds, and keep us from sleeping! FROM BANIAS TO EPHESUS. HASBEYA, April 13th. After stopping to admire once more the charming cascades of Banias, we resumed our journey across the Wady-et-Tim, the valley which continues that of the Jordan in a westerly direction, and presents the same appearance. This brought us to the lower slopes of Hermon in the midst of AntiLibanus. The amphitheatre of mountains is very grand; the hill-sides are covered with olive-trees. A deep ravine broken into countless clefts and crags runs through the landscape. At the edge of the ravine, on a height from which all the horizon of mountains is visible at one glance, stand the ruins of a temple of Baal in good preservation. It is a square structure of enormous blocks of stone placed one on the other without cement. It represents only that idea of massive strength, of material force, under which the old idolaters bowed down the human soul. This monument of the wild and sanguinary religion against which the prophets had so constantly to contend, excites keen interest, apart from the incomparable picturesqueness of its site. The town of Hasbeya, near which we are encamped in a delightful olive-garden, hangs on a mountain side; it still bears the traces of the massacre of 1860, when it was smitten by fire and sword. Last encampment on the road to Damascus. Letters! letters! news from France! This is one of my most vivid recollections of this week of travel. In our nomadic life, communications have been interrupted for nearly a month. What an age it seems! I never dare dwell on this side of our journeyings, for the mal de pays grows too strong; and farewell to all the delight of the eyes in the most ravishing scenes when that great aching takes possession of the soul! On Wednesday evening we passed a delightful hour at the foot of the cascade which falls not far from our camping-place at Hasbeya, opposite the glacier which commands the landscape. I have certainly * * * * seen finer cascades and grander glaciers, but this little cascade is one of the sources of the Jordan, and this glacier is Hermon, the mountain, probably, of the Transfiguration. Yesterday morning we started with the dawn, for an excursion, which was to be a notable extension of our day's programme. In vain dragoman and muleteers pronounced our plan impracticable, we held our ground and went, as we intended, to the famous gorges of the Leontes, one of the four rivers of Syria. We began by clambering one of the roughest of goat and gazelle tracks, which our horses, nevertheless, managed to mount briskly. From the top we perceived immense walls of rock, between which runs the river; but we wanted more than this; we were in search of the natural bridge, of which Robinson gives such a beautiful description. A fresh consultation ensued, and fresh protests from our guides, who gave vent to more than whispered maledictions on our insatiable curiosity. We met their remonstrances with the cold silence of a fixed determination, which was all the more easy, as cur muleteer spoke, or rather shouted, Arabic. Our firmness was amply repaid. After climbing an impossible acclivity, we found a guide at the village of El Kouveh, perched up in the clouds. A half-hour's walk brought us to the natural bridge. It is, beyond comparison, the most picturesque object we have seen in Syria. The green hills are replaced by gigantic denuded rocks, forming a rugged amphitheatre, behind which Lebanon rears his majestic form. Between these rocks, high as mountains, flows the river at a dizzy depth below. Its course is broken by a natural bridge, formed no doubt, of masses of stone detached from the surrounding rocks, which have piled themselves one on the other, and are clothed with a dense vegetation. The water plunges below this barrier, and re-appears beyond it, foaming and leaping. Huge stones scattered on every side tell of mysterious cataclysms; one seems to be standing on the theatre of some Titanic conflict, long anterior to human history. The whole scene is characterized by a terrible grandeur, which thrills the soul and urges the imagination far beyond the limits of the known. The strip of sky enclosed between these rocky summits was furrowed with stormy clouds, and the echoes of the Lebanon resounded with the dull mutterings of thunder. There was wonderful harmony between the strange reddish light and the sombre beauty of the landscape; we had |