The true source of the Orontes is found west of Baalbek, but the main supply of water is from the spring nearly thirty miles farther north, now called ’Ain el ’Asy. The river is here invisible from the plain, being hidden in a ravine some 300 feet deep. The pool, fringed with willows and full of cresses, is surrounded with tawny cliffs, and the full-grown river rushes rapidly northwards in a broad, shallow stream, breaking over a rocky bed between barren slopes dotted with wild olives. Above these slopes rises the grey and stony ridge of the Lebanon on the west, while the brown Buka’a stretches on the east. After about fifteen miles’ run the river emerges again on to the plain near Riblah, and flows by Kadesh to the long artificial lake of Homs, already noticed. Then breaking over the Roman dam in cascades, it again sinks into a trench in the plain, and flows by the gardens of Homs or Emesa, and so on to the hot and unhealthy gorge near Hamath, and to the marshy plain of El Omk, where it joins the Kara Su (“black water”), and suddenly bends to the west.
The limestone both on Lebanon and on Anti-Lebanon appears to be honeycombed with great subterranean caverns, in which underground rivers, fed by the snows of the higher ridges, flow towards the plains. The Abana, which rises in the plain of Zebdâny, west of the main ridge of the Anti-Lebanon, springs up in a blue pool of unknown depth, where the snow-cold water rises with great force and feeds a considerable stream, which, when increased by the rushing fountain at ’Ain Fiji (one of the most picturesque spots in the region), becomes the “River of Damascus,” which Naaman rightly preferred to the muddy waters of Jordan. At Beirut, also, the Dog River rises in magnificent stalagmitic caves in the bowels of the Lebanon, and farther north the old castle of Krak (already noticed) looks down on a narrow valley where is the monastery of St. George, near the cave in which rises the famous Sabbatic River, whose intermittent flow was reckoned among the wonders of Syria by the ancients. This river springs from a pool in the cave, and at intervals of between four and seven days a rumbling sound is heard in the mountains, and torrents of water flow forth from the cavern, pouring down the valley for several hours. In the Hermon region there is another similar phenomenon, which is, however, only to be seen in winter. The plain near the village of Kefr Kûk is said yearly to be turned into a lake by a torrent which rushes out of its cavern with a roaring noise like that of the Sabbatic River.