terraced as far as the eye can reach with indefatigable industry. Tiny
streamlets bound and leap from terrace to terrace, fertilising them as
they rush to join the torrent in the abyss. Some of the waterfalls are
of great height and of considerable volume. From one spot may be counted
no less than seven of these cascades, now dashing in white spray over a
cliff, now lost under the shade of trees, soon to reappear over the
next shelving rock."[138] Or, to quote from another writer,[139]--"The
descent from the summit is gradual, but is everywhere broken by
precipices and towering rocks, which time and the elements have
chiselled into strange fantastic shapes. Ravines of singular wildness
and grandeur furrow the whole mountain-side, looking in many places like
huge rents. Here and there, too, bold promontories shoot out, and
dip perpendicularly into the bosom of the Mediterranean. The ragged
limestone banks are scantily clothed with the evergreen oak, and
the sandstone with pines; while every available spot is carefully
cultivated. The cultivation is wonderful, and shows what all Syria might
be of under a good government. Miniature fields of grain are often seen
where one would suppose that the eagles alone, which hover round them,
could have planted the seed. Fig-trees cling to the naked rock; vines
are trained along narrow ledges; long ranges of mulberries on terraces
like steps of stairs cover the more gentle declivities; and dense groves
of olives fill up the bottoms of the glens. Hundreds of villages are
seen, here built amid labyrinths of rock, there clinging like swallows'
nests to the sides of cliffs, while convents, no less numerous, are
perched on the top of every peak. When viewed from the sea on a morning
in early spring, Lebanon presents a picture which once seen is never
forgotten; but deeper still is the impression left on the mind, when one
looks down over its terraced slopes clothed in their gorgeous foliage,
and through the vistas of its magnificent glens, on the broad and bright
Mediterranean."