Crossing the Anti-Lebanon.

I learn that the Druses are in revolt in Djebel Hauaran and parts of the Anti-Lebanon, which will prevent my forming any settled plan for the tour through Palestine and Syria.

This is the loftiest peak of the Anti-Lebanon, and is 10,000 feet above the sea.

The soil, which slowly climbs upward through a long valley between Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, is cut with deep ravines.

" The Anti-Lebanon now rose near us, its northern and western slopes green with trees and grass.

Crossing the Anti-Lebanon.

We gave ourselves up to fate, with true Arab-resignation, and began ascending the Anti-Lebanon.

Up to this time, we met very few persons; and we forgot the anticipated perils in contemplating the rugged scenery of the Anti-Lebanon.

We had now fairly crossed the Anti-Lebanon.

They yielded with a bad grace; and we jogged on over the stony road, crossing the long hills which form the eastern base of the Anti-Lebanon.

Since our arrival, I find that two other parties of travellers, one of which crossed the Anti-Lebanon on the northern side of Mount Hermon, were obliged to take guards, and saw several Druse spies posted on the heights, as they passed.

True, when you behold Damascus from the Salahiyeh, the last slope of the Anti-Lebanon, it is the realization of all that you have dreamed of Oriental splendor; the world has no picture more dazzling.

Soon after leaving, our path crossed a small stream, which comes down to the Barrada from the upper valleys of the Anti-Lebanon, and entered a wild pass, faced with cliffs of perpendicular rock.

The next day, we crossed a pass in the Anti-Lebanon beyond Zebdeni, descended a beautiful valley on the western side, under a ridge which was still dotted with patches of snow, and after travelling for some hours over a wide, barren height, the last of the range, saw below us the plain of Baalbec.

A little beyond Baalbec, the Anti-Lebanon terminates, sinking into the Syrian plain, while the Lebanon, though its name and general features are lost, about twenty miles further to the north is succeeded by other ranges, which, though broken at intervals, form a regular series, connecting with the Taurus, in Asia Minor.

As I rode along the valley, with the towering, snow-sprinkled ridge of the Anti-Lebanon on my right, a cloudless heaven above my head, and meads enamelled with the asphodel and scarlet anemone stretching before me, I felt that the last shadow had rolled away from my brain.

The distant view of the temple, on descending the last slope of the Anti-Lebanon, is not calculated to raise one's expectations.

We had sent our baggage before us, and the men, with an eye to the picturesque which I should not have suspected in Arabs, had pitched our tents under those trees, where the stream poured its snow-cold beakers beside us, and the tent-door looked down on the plain of Baalbec and across to the Anti-Lebanon.

They wanted us to take a guard, but after our experience on the Anti-Lebanon, we felt safer without one.

It well deserves to rank with the panorama of Cairo from the citadel, and that of Damascus from the Anti-Lebanon, in extent, picturesqueness and rich oriental character.

ORONTES, the principal river of Syria, rises in the western slopes of Anti-Lebanon, and flows northward through Syria, turning at last SW.

In the S. lies Palestine, embracing Jordan, Dead Sea, Lake of Tiberias (Sea of Galilee), Jerusalem, Gaza, &c.; in the N., between the parallel ranges of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, lies the valley of Coele-Syria, through which flows the Orontes.