The eastern flank of the mountain falls very far short of the western
both in area and in beauty. It is a comparatively narrow region, and
presents none of the striking features of gorge, ravine, deep dell, and
dashing stream which diversify the side that looks westward. The steep
slopes are generally bare, the lower portion only being scantily clothed
with deciduous oak, for the most part stunted, and with low scrub of
juniper and barberry.[140] Towards the north there is an outer barrier,
parallel with the main chain, on which follows a tolerably flat and
rather bare plain, well watered, and with soft turf in many parts, which
gently slopes to the foot of the main ascent, a wall of rock generally
half covered with snow, up which winds the rough track whereby
travellers reach the summit. Rills of water are not wanting; flowers
bloom to the very edge of the snow, and the walnut-tree flourishes in
sheltered places to within two or three thousand feet of the summit; but
the general character of the tract is bare and bleak; the villages are
few; and the terraced cultivation, which adds so much to the beauty
of the western side, is wanting. In the southern half of the range the
descent is abrupt from the crest of the mountain into the Buka'a, or
valley of the Litany, and the aspect of the mountain-side is one of
"unrelieved bareness."[141]

There is, however, one beauty at one point on this side of the Lebanon
range which is absent from the more favoured western region. On the
ascent from Baalbek to the Cedars the traveller comes upon Lake Lemone,
a beautiful mountain tarn, without any apparent exit, the only sheet
of water in the Lebanon. Lake Lemone is of a long oval shape, about
two miles from one end to the other, and is fed by a stream entering at
either extremity, that from the north, which comes down from the village
of Ainât, being the more important. As the water which comes into