.—, 
7; “arr. = 
NOTES ON A SOJOURN IN THE LEVANT. 39 
They say he lies on his back, with his legs below the knees hanging 
down, so that you only see his length from his head to his knees. 
I stepped the length of this thrall, and, adding on a quarter of his 
apparent height to cover the length of his tibia and feet, I made 
his height just one hundred and twenty feet. And yet he would 
seem to have been no broader or stouter than any ordinary man. 
The traditional tomb of Seth lies farther along the valley. This, 
however, I did not visit. 
From Zahleh to Baalbec the distance is about twenty-five miles, 
and the road lies mostly by the side of the river Leontes, or Litany, 
as it is now called. Baalbec is generally considered to be the 
same place as Baalgad, mentioned in Joshua xi. 17, thus—‘‘ Baalgad 
in the valley under Mount Hermon.” And again in Joshua xiii. 5, 
**Baalgad under Mount Hermon by the entering into Hamath.” 
Baalbec, or as it is also called, Heliopolis, was once a large and 
flourishing town. This was in the time when the Phcenicians 
were the great commercial nation in the Levant. In those days 
Tyre was the port to which were carried the goods brought by 
the Persian caravan, and from this port they were distributed to all 
parts of the then known world. Baalbec was on the direct route 
of this caravan, and was one of the intermediate centres of distri- 
bution. Now, nothing is left of this once flourishing town but the 
vast ruins which all the world has heard of, and some mud hovels 
in which live the regular inhabitants of the place. 
Little is known as to who built these temples; history is 
silent on the matter. Tradition assigns the building of them to 
Solomon, but the style of architecture of the greater part, if not of 
the whole of the buildings, is debased Corinthian, so it is not 
easy to see how Solomon could have built them. I think the 
best opinion is that the buildings that originally stood where these 
temples now stand were of considerable antiquity—perhaps 
Solomon may have built them—that they fell into ruin, and their 
foundations were used in building the temples whose ruins we 
now see there, and which mws/, by the style of their architecture, 
have been built between 400 and 250 B.c. I believe authorities 
generally consider that the remains consist of the ruins of two 
