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and myself during our day at Beyrout engaged an excellent
dragoman, whose name was Abdallah - which means “Son of God”.
to pilot us and bring us back in six days. Mr Balfour not caring
to go, and remaining with a friend and his wife whom he met there
and with whom I was invited to take tea in the evening.
Those English people whom I met, very soon wished to know whether I
was from a northern or southern State of the Union, and I could see
that they observed me closely after knowing that I was a slaveowner.
The novel of Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Mrs Beecher Stowe had been generally
read throughout the civilized world and had produced a profound
impression. The slaveowners were consequently at that time in great
disrepute, and were generally thought to be a set of hard hearted brutes
whose greatest pleasure was to torture and ill use their slaves. I
could see that my gentle manners puzzled them, and that these were
refined and polished people who were owners of slaves seemed to dawn
upon them for the first time. My evening with my newly made friends
at Beyrout was a very pleasant one.
On the morning of the second day at sunrise our journey commenced.
Hambro myself and Abdallah were well mounted, and there was
a fourth horse to carry our luggage and some provisions. The ascent
and crossing of the Lebanon mountain at the back of the town occupied us
for several hours, and that night was spent at a miserable village
where we slept in a dirty hut filled with fleas. The next morning
we started again and passed through a pretty valley lying between
the Lebanon and the ante Lebanon. The ruins of Baalbec were
reached at an early hour of the afternoon, giving us ample time
for an examination, and there we spent the night.
These ruins consist of the remains of two temples both of which were
dedicated to Apollo or to the Sun. Several columns are still standing
and there is some elaborate carving around the entrance doorway of the
best preserved of the two. It is a curious fact that nothing positive
is known about these temples. They are only incidentally alluded
to by some writer of the second century of the Christian Era, and
the city of Baalbec, which, judging from these ruins, must have been
an important one, seems to have played a very unimportant role
in history. The site of the temples is near the rize of an adjoining hill,
and is somewhat elevated above the surrounding plain. The area is
enclosed by a stone wall composed of immense blocks, reminding
us of some of the monoliths in Egypt, the quarrying and transpor-
tation of which must have been a great undertaking.
The night at this place was spent in a much better house than
the last. We slept in the same apartment with the owner and
his wife, but the proprieties of life were strictly observed and there
was no undressing worth speaking of. Before the hour for sleep
a number of the villagers came in to see us. They looked at us
with much interest and curiosity and there was a great deal of
talking among them about us which of course we could not un-
derstand. The visitors were mostly women one or two of whom were
rather good looking although not very young.
The journey to Damascus was completed the next day, Wednesday, at
about 12 and after putting up at a lodging house we adjourned without
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