295 



trie maritime plain of tliis coast was much wider than at 

 present, this would have enabled herds of horses and deer to 

 migrate from north to south, and to find suitable pasturage, 

 and would also have afforded fit haunts for the rhinoceros. 

 It is evident, however, that any such condition of the 

 coast must have been anterior to the times of Phoenician 

 history. 



It is also probable that the caves may have been occupied 

 occasionally, or at certain seasons, rather than continuously. 

 The bones and knives are not merely covered with stalagtnitic 

 matter, but mixed with it, indicating that the deposit was in 

 progress when these reuiains were being accumulated. This 

 would also give evidence of a more moist climate than that 

 prevailing at present, and probably a wooded condition of 

 the country, such as that referred to in the descriptions of 

 Lebanon in the Old Testament, and which must have con- 

 tinued from the earliest times till the hills were finally denuded 

 of their trees by the agency of man. 



Though it is possible that these caves may have remained 

 intact until the cutting of the Roman road, it seems more 

 probable that their roofs were removed previously, and the 

 appearance of the rock, along with the absence of any evidence 

 of late residence, agrees with the character of the animal 

 remains in indicating that their occupancy by man had been 

 brought to a close anterior to the times of history, and possibly 

 in the great submergence which closed the second continental 

 or antediluvian period. There is, in any case, no evidence of 

 any later occupancy than that by the early people whose debris 

 is enclosed in the stalagmite. 



I may remark here that the knives in these caves are 

 made of the flint found in the immediate vicinity, and that 

 they differ in no respect from those of the later caves and 

 rock shelters of this region, except in perhaps being a little 

 broader and more massive. (PI. III.) 



On the border of St. George^s Bay, between the caves and 

 Ant Elias, I observed, near the shore, and at no great elevation, 

 a band of red loam and stones in which were a few similar 

 flint flakes. The red earth in question is a remanie deposit 

 derived from the older red earth to be noticed in the sequel, 

 and which contains no stones or flints. The flakes contained 

 in this remanie earth may have been washed out of old caverns, 

 or from the surface of the ground at higher levels ; but 

 probably at a period historically very ancient. 



The stream of Ant Elias, between Nahr-el-Kelb and Beyrout, 

 bubbles up from the bottom of a ravine, in front of a cavern, 

 along which its waters ai*e carried as in a tunnel. On the 



