The scene presented a great contrast on the east and west. In the brown, desolate, and boundless plain to the east, stood the distant green oasis of Damascus, and the white city, with its tall minarets. The flat horizon was broken only by the peaks of Jebel Kuleib, the "Hill of Bashan,â some seventy miles away. South-east of Damascus was the terrible Lejja district, a basin of basalt seamed with deep gorges, like rough furrows, and with isolated cones, into which one appeared to look down, so distinctly were the shadows marked inside the hollow broken craters. No trees or water relieved the dusky colour; but the great dust whirlwinds were swirling slowly along over the plains, the bodies, as the Arabs tell us, of huge malignant spirits, carrying destruction in their path. At the foot of the mountain little villages were perched on the rocks, and a stream glittered in a green valley. In most of these hamlets there is a temple facing the rising sun, which appears first from behind the great plain on the east.
On the west, high mountain walls, ridge behind ridge, reached out towards Beyrout, and, on the north, cedar clumps and ragged peaks, grey and dark with long sweeping shadows, were thrown in strong contrast against the shining sea.
The sun began to set, a deep ruby flush came over all the scene, and warm purple shadows crept slowly on. The Sea of Galilee was lit up with a delicate greenish-yellow hue, between its dim walls of hill. The flush died out in a few minutes, and a pale, steel-coloured shade succeeded, although to us, at a height of 9150 feet, the sun was still visible, and the rocks around us still ruddy.
A long pyramidal shadow slid down to the eastern foot of Hermon, and crept across the great plain; Damascus was swallowed up by it, and finally the pointed end of the shadow stood out distinctly against the sky--a dusky cone of dull colour against the flush of the afterglow. It was the shadow of the mountain itself, stretching away for seventy miles across the plain--the most marvellous shadow perhaps to be seen anywhere.
The sun underwent strange changes of shape in the thick vapours--now almost square, now like a domed temple--until at length it slid into the sea, and went out like a blue spark.