Returning to Tents—Mountain Spurs and Passes—A Modern Thermopylae—Two Caravans Meet—A Fight to the Death—How Johnson Looks—Victory at Last—Into the Valley where the King Lost his Eyes—Playing at Agriculture—Squalid Poverty—Baalbek—Its Mighty Temples—Men, Mice and Monkeys—A Poem Writ in Marble.
LEAVING the Cedars, and descending to the base of the mountain where the tents were left, we start across the beautiful valley lying between the long mountain of Lebanon and anti-Lebanon. Before reaching the valley proper we are compelled to cross some rough mountain spurs and to go through some narrow mountain passes. It so happens that we meet a train of heavily laden camels. The fanatical and blood-thirsty Arabs managing the camels stop their caravan and obstinately refuse to give any part of the pass. Our body-guards come up. A quarrel ensues. A war of words leads to blows, and we have, enacted before our own eyes, a second “Battle of the Giants.” It looks to Johnson like the first one. The two parties, consisting of about forty Arabs, curse, threaten, close on each other, clinch, fight like fiends, grapple like giants. They fall to the earth in each other’s embrace, roll over, first one on top and then the other. They bite, kick and scratch each other. Together they fall and together they rise again—one bites the dust and then another. Javelins are used. Stones fly, sabres flash—gods! how they fight! Heads are mashed and limbs are broken. Hair flies and blood flows. The horses scare, the women scream and Johnson looks as if he wants to say:
“Lay on, MacDuff, And damned be he who first cries, ‘Hold, enough!’”
At last the enemy is repulsed and victory perches upon our banner. The dust and din of battle are no more. We are relieved; for danger was imminent and suspense correspondingly great. It is the greatest wonder, and also the greatest blessing imaginable, that no one was killed. If one of the natives had been killed, I am sure the whole community would have been aroused, and would have poured out their indignation and wrath upon our Christian heads—”Christian dogs,” they call us. I see from the _London Times_ that only a few weeks ago twenty-four Christians were killed in a fray with the Arabs, not far from this place. We would not willingly harm a hair of their heads. All we wanted was room to pass, and having secured that we continue our journey.