History of Phoenicia | Page 9

bulk of the mountain, and all the higher ranges, are without exception
limestone of the early cretaceous period, the valleys and gorges are
filled with formations of every possible variety, sedimentary,
metamorphic, and igneous. Down many of them run long streams of
trap or basalt; occasionally there are dykes of porphyry and greenstone,
and then patches of sandstone, before the limestone and flint recur."[33]
Some slopes are composed entirely of soft sandstone; many patches are
of a hard metallic-sounding trap or porphyry; but the predominant
formation is a greasy or powdery limestone, bare often, but sometimes
clothed with a soft herbage, or with a thick tangle of shrubs, or with
lofty forest trees. The ridge of the mountain is everywhere naked
limestone rock, except in the comparatively few places which attain the
highest elevation, where it is coated or streaked with snow. Two
summits are especially remarkable, that of Jebel Sunnin towards the

south, which is a conspicuous object from Beyrout,[34] and is
estimated to exceed the height of 9,000 feet,[35] and that of Jebel
Mukhmel towards the north, which has been carefully measured and
found to fall a very little short of 10,200 feet.[36] The latter, which
forms a sort of amphitheatre, circles round and impends over a deep
hollow or basin, opening out towards the west, in which rise the chief
sources that go to form the romantic stream of the Kadisha. The sides
of the basin are bare and rocky, fringed here and there with the rough
knolls which mark the deposits of ancient glaciers, the "moraines" of
the Lebanon. In this basin stand "the Cedars." It is not indeed true, as
was for a long time supposed, that the cedar grove of Jebel Mukhmel is
the sole remnant of that primeval cedar-forest which was anciently the
glory of the mountain. Cedars exist on Lebanon in six other places at
least, if not in more. Near Tannurin, on one of the feeders of the
Duweir, a wild gorge is clothed from top to bottom with a forest of
trees, untouched by the axe, the haunt of the panther and the bear,
which on examination have been found to be all cedars, some of a large
size, from fifteen to eighteen feet in girth. They grow in clusters, or
scattered singly, in every variety of situation, some clinging to the steep
slopes, or gnarled and twisted on the bare hilltops, others sheltered in
the recesses of the dell. There are also cedar-groves at B'sherrah; at El
Hadith; near Dûma, five hours south-west of El Hadith; in one of the
glens north of Deir-el-Kamar, at Etnub, and probably in other
places.[37] But still "the Cedars" of Jebel Mukhmel are entitled to
pre-eminence over all the rest, both as out-numbering any other cluster,
and still more as exceeding all the rest in size and apparent antiquity.
Some of the patriarchs are of enormous girth; even the younger ones
have a circumference of eighteen feet; and the height is such that the
birds which dwell among the upper branches are beyond the range of
an ordinary fowling-piece.
But it is through the contrasts which it presents that Lebanon has its
extraordinary power of attracting and delighting the traveller. Below
the upper line of bare and worn rock, streaked in places with snow, and
seamed with torrent courses, a region is entered upon where the
freshest and softest mountain herbage, the greenest foliage, and the
most brilliant flowers alternate with deep dells, tremendous gorges,

rocky ravines, and precipices a thousand feet high. Scarcely has the
voyager descended from the upper region of naked and rounded rock,
when he comes upon "a tremendous chasm--the bare amphitheatre of
the upper basin contracts into a valley of about 2,000 feet deep, rent at
its bottom into a cleft a thousand feet deeper still, down which dashes a
river, buried between these stupendous walls of rock. All above the
chasm is terraced as far as the eye can reach with indefatigable industry.
Tiny streamlets bound and leap from terrace to terrace, fertilising them
as they rush to join the torrent in the abyss. Some of the waterfalls are
of great height and of considerable volume. From one spot may be
counted no less than seven of these cascades, now dashing in white
spray over a cliff, now lost under the shade of trees, soon to reappear
over the next shelving rock."[38] Or, to quote from another
writer,[39]--"The descent from the summit is gradual, but is
everywhere broken by precipices and towering rocks, which time and
the elements have chiselled into strange fantastic shapes. Ravines of
singular wildness and grandeur furrow the whole mountain-side,
looking in many places like huge rents. Here and there, too, bold
promontories shoot out, and dip perpendicularly into the bosom of the
Mediterranean. The