Truly, there is no reason why those monster stones should not have been quarried a million or so years ago and moved by the vast animal creatures of that period. We have biblical authority for the giants, and I have seen a brontosaur in the New York Museum that seemed to go with stones of about that size. Think of any force the Romans could summon rolling a three-million-pound square stone up an inclined plane. Preposterous! The brontosaur's the thing.
There is a good deal of country, mainly desert, between Baalbec and Damascus, and a good many barren hills. Crossing the Anti-Lebanon mountains there is a little of water and soil and much red, rocky waste. Here and there a guide pointed out a hill where Cain killed Abel--not always the same hill, but no matter, it was a hill in this neighborhood; any one of them would make a good place. Occasionally the train passed a squalid village, perched on a lonely shelf--a single roof stretching over most of the houses--the inhabitants scarcely visible. We wondered where they got their sustenance. They were shepherds, perhaps, but where did their flocks feed?
Across the divide, between snow-capped hills, and suddenly we are face to face with green banks and the orchard bloom of spring. We have reached the Abana, the river which all the ages has flowed down to Damascus with its gift of eternal youth. For as the desert defends, so the river sustains Damascus, and the banks of the Abana (they call it the Barada now) are just a garden--the Garden of Eden, if old tales be true.
It is not hard to believe that tradition here, at this season. Peach, apricot, almond, and plum fairly sing with blossom; birch and sycamore blend a cadence of tender green; the red earth from which Adam was created (and which his name signifies) forms an abundant underchord. If we could linger a little by these pleasant waters we might learn the lilt of the tree of life--its whisper of the forbidden fruit.
We are among our older traditions here--the beginnings of the race. We have returned after devious wanderings. These people whom we see leading donkeys and riding camels, tending their flocks and bathing in the Abana, they are our relatives--sons and daughters of Adam. Only, they did not move away. They stayed on the old place, as it were, and preserved the family traditions, and customs. I am moved to get out and call them "cousin" and embrace them, and thank them for not trailing off after the false gods and frivolities of the West.