meadows turned into golden mosaic by a brilliant yellow daisy. Until noon
our road was over a region of alternate meadow land and gentle though
stony elevations, making out from Lebanon. We met continually with
indications of ancient power and prosperity. The ground was strewn with
hewn blocks, and the foundations of buildings remain in many places.
Broken sarcophagi lie half-buried in grass, and the gray rocks of the
hills are pierced with tombs. The soil, though stony, appeared to be
naturally fertile, and the crops of wheat, barley, and lentils were very
flourishing. After rounding the promontory which forms the southern
boundary of the Gulf of Sidon, we rode for an hour or two over a plain
near the sea, and then came down to a valley which ran up among the hills,
terminating in a natural amphitheatre. An ancient barrow, or tumulus,
nobody knows of whom, stands near the sea. During the day I noticed two
charming little pictures. One, a fountain gushing into a broad square
basin of masonry, shaded by three branching cypresses. Two Turks sat on
its edge, eating their bread and curdled milk, while their horses drank
out of the stone trough below. The other, an old Mahommedan, with a green
turban and white robe, seated at the foot of a majestic sycamore, over the
high bank of a stream that tumbled down its bed of white marble rock to
the sea.

The plain back of the narrow, sandy promontory on which the modern Soor
is built, is a rich black loam, which a little proper culture would turn
into a very garden. It helped me to account for the wealth of ancient
Tyre. The approach to the town, along a beach on which the surf broke with
a continuous roar, with the wreck of a Greek vessel in the foreground, and
a stormy sky behind, was very striking. It was a wild, bleak picture, the
white minarets of the town standing out spectrally against the clouds. We
rode up the sand-hills, back of the town, and selected a good
camping-place among the ruins of Tyre. Near us there was an ancient square