FROM BAALBEK TO DAMASCUS. 
245 
woman, standing near, and seeing all their efforts unavailing, 
said ; “ Upon my soul! a nice set of fellows you are not to 
be able to carry a little stone !” “ Little !” quoth they ; “do 
you call this little ?” “ To be sure I do/’ said the woman ; 
“ a mere nothing. If you were men you could carry it.” 
“ Hear her !” said they. “ Why, one would think you could 
carry it yourself, the way you talk.” “ Carry it ! Of course 
I can,” said she; whereupon she laid hold of the stone, lifted 
it up on her back, and trotted all the way with it to Baalbek, 
where she laid it down by the castle-wall. “ Now,” said she 
to the Sultan, who was superintending the work, “give me 
ten thousand piastres for carrying this stone here.” “ May I 
he kicked like a dog if I do,” said the Sultan, in a rage. 
“What! have all my men disgraced, and then pay a slave 
of a woman for doing it! Get thee away, wretch !” “ Oh, 
ho!” said the woman; “is that the way you talk?” Where¬ 
upon she seized the Sultan by the hack of the neck, and pitched 
him headlong into a neighboring ditch, giving him a kick as 
he went. “ By my soul !” quoth she, “ men are forgetting 
their place nowadays. They are getting as impertinent &nd 
conceited as popinjays.” With that she seized hold of the 
stone again, tumbled it over on her back, and trotted all the 
way back with it to the quarry, where the workmen were 
still looking at one another in silent astonishment. “ There,” 
said the woman, pitching the stbne down ; “I told you so ! 
You had better go now and help the Sultan out of the ditch. 
He’s floundering about there like a mud-turtle.” Saying 
which, she slapped the chief workman heels over head, be¬ 
cause he was staring at her, and went off dancing the Haas, 
since which time the stone has remained just as she left it. 
The Arabs pointed it out to us, and said there was no doubt 
about the truth of the story, for the stone was in the very 
same spot. That they believed every word of it themselves 
was quite evident; and we, of course, believed as much as 
we could. 
Passing some ancient tombs on the left, we descended into 
a rocky valley, called Wady Ain Tihebeh, or the valley of 
the well. Here there were some camels feeding near by the 
