The gardens of
Sidon, luxuriant with bananas, oranges, figs, lemons, pomegranates,
peaches, apricots, &c., extend across the plain for two miles to the
mountain, and show what Ph[oe]nicia may once have been. The palm trees
that adorn the fertile gardens of Beyrout are doubtless survivors of the
groves from which the strip of land once took its name.[57]

By the exertions of Lord Dufferin in 1860, a Christian governor was
placed over the Lebanon in a semi-independent position. Since then the
terraced mountain has been marvellously developed, and every foothold
has been planted with vines and figs and mulberries. The industrious
peasantry, comparatively safe from Turkish rapacity, have cultivated the
ledges among its crags and peaks, and enjoy the fruits of their
industry, sitting under their vines and fig trees. The bloodthirsty and
turbulent Druzes, restrained by law, and unable to hold their own in a
field of fair competition, are being rapidly civilized off the mountain,
and betake themselves to remote regions in Bashan where no law is
acknowledged but that of the strong arm.

Between Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon stretches for seventy miles
C[oe]lo-Syria or Buka'a, a well-watered and fertile plain, containing
about 500 square miles and 137 agricultural villages, and marked by such
ruins as those of Chalcis and Baalbek.

The Anti-Lebanon consists of a series of mountain ranges, some of which
run parallel with Lebanon, and flatten into the plain at "the gathering
in of Hamath," while some bend off in a more easterly direction, and
shoot out boldly into the desert. The westward end of this mountainous
range rises into Mount Hermon. The eastward end sinks into Palmyra.
North of the Anti-Lebanon, the narrow plain of C[oe]lo-Syria expands
into the great rolling country of high-land, river, lake, and plain,
where for more than a thousand years the Hittite kings rolled back the
tide of Egyptian and Assyrian invasion, and where, in later years, the
Selucidae kings pastured their elephants and steeds of war.

Among the ranges and spurs of the Anti-Lebanon are many green spots of
great picturesque beauty. Wherever there are fountains the habitations
of men are clustered together at the water, seemingly jostling and
struggling like thirsty flocks to get to its margin. The cottages cling
to the edges of fountains and rivers in the most perilous positions.
Sometimes they are stuck to the rocks like swallows' nests, and
sometimes th