66 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



ONE OF THE BESHERRY GROUP OF GIANT CEDARS 



These trees, once so much in demand, are slowly 

 declining in number, beauty, and value, as no one is 

 responsible for their care or cultivation. They might be 

 grown by the thousand and a large business so built up. 



ing the month of November the fatted 

 sheep is killed and cut up into mince- 

 meat and melted in its own fat, to be 

 used as a relish and sauce with the boiled 

 rice or wheat that forms the staple dish 

 of these hardy people. 



Should occasion require, the fatted 

 sheep may be killed to provide a feast 

 for some unusual event, and in this cus- 

 tom there may be a perpetuation of the 

 "fatted calf" of the Gospel. Hours are 

 spent by the women and girls coaxing 

 food down the throats of these overfed 

 sheep, and toward the close of their ex- 

 istence they are so fat that they are 

 unable to stand. 



In some parts of the Lebanon 

 the earth lends itself to the art 

 of making pottery, and thou- 

 sands of the natives get a liveli- 

 hood by the manufacture of all 

 kinds of earthenware vessels. 

 Hidden away in the corner of his 

 one-room house, the potter turns 

 his wheel just as did the one to 

 whom the ancient seer was com- 

 manded to go in the adjoining 

 country of Palestine. From this 

 primitive machinery comes many 

 a vessel that for shape and form 

 would do credit to the most 

 skilled workman of the Occident. 

 From the wheel the pottery is 

 taken to be dried in the sun, then 

 handled by the women, who do 

 their best at decoration by paint- 

 ing all kinds of designs on the 

 jars ere they are consigned to the 

 furnace to be baked. 



After the baking they are sold 

 to traders, who transport them 

 on muleback to all parts of the 

 country, both east and west of 

 the Jordan, to be sold or bar- 

 tered for what we would think a 

 ridiculously low price, but what 

 enables many a man from the 

 proceeds to retire and leave his 

 sons to turn the wheel. 



Unfortunately emigration to 

 the United States has drawn 

 away the flower of the Lebanon, 

 and the pottery industry is in 

 danger of becoming a thing of the past 

 unless the sons of the land realize that 

 there are fortunes in the clay of the 

 mountains of their native land as well 

 as the factories of America. 



But the Lebanon contains natural 

 beauties and wonders that equal if not 

 surpass those of other lands. There is 

 a remarkable natural bridge that has a 

 span of 125 feet with a river 75 feet 

 beneath it. This bridge has been formed 

 by the running of the waters of cen- 

 turies from the melting snows on Jebel 

 Sennin, which rears its head 8,000 feet 

 above sea-level and is "monarch of all 



