The BUKÂA, supposed to be the Bikath Aven of the Hebrews (_Amos_ i, 5), is a long plain extending about one hundred miles between the Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon mountains, leading down to the Jordan valley, and the Mediterranean. It was anciently called Cœlesyria or Hollow Syria, and was the natural highway of the invading armies of Egypt, Persia, Assyria, &c., from all time. It is mentioned in the Bible as the “entering in of Hamath,” but was only for a short time in the possession of the Kings of Israel. Along this plain commander Cameron projected a railway between Damascus, _viâ_ Baalbec, Homs, Hamah and Aleppo northwards, with a branch from Homs to Tripoli westwards, and to Jerusalem along the western side of the Jordan valley—all possible enough to make, but scarcely probable to pay. The railway was to be commenced at Tripoli, taking a détour to Damascus to avoid the mountains. This enterprising project was to embrace, eventually, a Euphrates valley line to Bombay, _viâ_ the Persian Gulf, and to Northern India, _viâ_ Persia and Afghanistan, and the system was to be connected with Constantinople by a line through Asia Minor, _viâ_ Diarbekir to Ismid, where it would join the railway to Scutari and the Bosphorus, opposite Stamboul. It is a pretty project on paper, a magnificent prophecy of the future, and we hope that commander Cameron will live to see his great scheme a paying reality. Soon after leaving Baalbec we come across an isolated ruin, the shrine of some Moslem saint reared evidently out of the ruins of the Acropolis.
THE BUKÂA plain is fertile, but the absence of trees renders a journey through it rather monotonous for some hours. We lunch at a small Arab Khan, and passing several villages reach at length that of Kerak Nûh, where we are shown the tomb of Noah, one hundred feet long, eight feet wide and three deep, very like a length of an ancient aqueduct, so this ante and post diluvian patriarch must have been slightly out of proportion. How he was accommodated in his own ark, which was smaller than the Great Eastern, only about fifty feet high, and then divided into three decks, my Moslem guide did not inform me. Noah’s ark, by-the-bye, is said to have been built at Jaffa, where we first entered the Holy Land. The next largest ship of ancient times spoken of by Lucian is that of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and was probably about 1,100 tonnage—it seems however soon to have come to grief. According to Moslem tradition, Hezekiah is said to be buried near Noah. We next pass through MULAKA, a prosperous Moslem town, full of Manchester prints, which is almost joined to ZAHLEH, a large Maronite Christian town on the frontier of the Lebanon; it is a manufacturing town, finely situated at the entrance of the Sannin gorge, in an amphitheatre of high mountains; it was the headquarters of the Druses during the 1860 massacres. We now ride through many miles of vineyards and mulberry trees to Shtôra, the principal station on the Damascus diligence road, and put up for the night at the little inn there. Our last day’s ride is to Beyrût, about nine hours along the diligence road over the Lebanon. We soon have to take our last look at Hermon, the Baalbec plain and the Anti-Lebanon, and ascending to the summit of the pass catch a first glimpse of the sea. The Lebanon mountains here are nearly 7,000 feet high, and Beyrût shrouded in pine forest, lies nestled at the foot of them on the low coast line.