II. NATURAL BRIDGE OVER THE LITANY OR LEONTES. In April, 1844, the Rev. Eli Smith and Rev. S. H. Calhoun left Jerusalem by way of Jericho, intending to pass up the valley of the Jordan to Tiberias. They proceeded as far north in the valley as the mouth of Wady el-Faria'; beyond which they were unable to obtain guides or any other aid from the terror-stricken Arabs. They therefore turned their course by way of Sânûr to 'Akka; and from thence took their way across the mountains, by Rumeish and Bint Jebeil, to Kadesh of Naphtali and Bânias, by a route before unexplored. They returned to Beirût by way of the bridge of Khurdela and the castle esh-Shukif; continuing along upon the higher parts of Lebanon until they came opposite to Sidon, where they descended. A full journal of the whole tour was kept by Mr. Smith, a copy of which is in my hands. It is exceedingly valuable; and we may hope that it will one day see the light. In May and June of the same year, Mr. Smith resided for some weeks at Hasbeiya; and made excursions into the neighborhood and also to Damascus. Full notes of all these were kept by him; of which, too, I have a copy. A third journal, by the same hand, is made up from notes of various excursions into different parts of Lebanon; mainly the portion lying in and between the tracts drained by the Nahr el-Kelb, north of Beirût, and the 'Awâly, which enters the sea near Sidon. Within these limits there is scarcely a village which has not been visited and its position described. It is by far the most minute and exact topographical account of Lebanon, its features and its villages, which has ever been drawn up. In the journal at Hasbeiya there is brought to notice for the first time the natural bridge over the Litany, which Mr. Smith visited and described. It is understood that he directed the attention of the officers of the late Dead Sea expedition to this bridge; who also visited it and brought away a drawing. It is due to Mr. Smith that bis account, as the earliest, should be laid before the public. Some other extracts are prefixed, describing the nature of the country and the singular channel of the Litany. In passing up Wady et-Teim, and not far above the fountain of Hasbeiya, Mr. S. left that valley and crossed the intervening ridge to the valley of the Litany, near the little Metâwileh village of Kilya. "On the left," he says, "a hill projected [from the ridge just crossed] towards the bold side of Lebanon, which but for the Litàny it would have joined. Just there, however, the river rushes through an awful chasm; and soon passes Burghůz [with its bridge] on the further side of the bill. The village of Kilya stands just on the brink of the left bank of the river. Both banks were perpendicular, and corresponded with each other in the strata of the 1849.] Natural Bridge. 373 rocks; being just far enough apart for the passage of the stream, and probably hundreds of feet high. In a similar position, on the opposite bank, was another little village called Lusah. The inhabitants could converse with each other across the river; and, notwithstanding the steepness of the banks, they have got a footpath up and down them. The ridge we had crossed slopes gradually on this side; and is generally arable. Beyond the stream, also, Mount Lebanon (north of the pass towards Bŭrghuz) does not come quite down to the river, but leaves an arable tract. Some distance [three or four miles] to the north, a higher tract crosses from the eastern ridge to the mountain, intersected by the river, and having the village of Yulmur upon its top, just on the left bank of the stream. The region thus defined has the general form of a large basin. Through the midst of it runs the river, everywhere between the same precipitous banks. There is, most of the way, no depression of the ground as you approach the banks, the undulations of surface on each side being the same; so that, whenever you lose sight of the chasm of the river, you would not suspect that the whole was not one continuous surface. So deep a channel, formed with so little disturbance of the contiguous region, seemed to me not to be the work of an earthquake; but the result of the gradual wear of a waterfall. I should add, that everywhere it seemed to have selected the lowest part of the tract." From Kilya Mr. S. proceeded to Yuhmur, a Metâwilah village on the higher tract north of the basin, in an hour and three quarters, by a somewhat circuitous path. At Yuhmur he goes on to say: "We were now at the most majestic part of the wonderful chasm. Its banks I judged to be at least a thousand feet in height; higher than at any other point. The rock, being less firm in its texture than below, had, in many places, been worn away or had slidden down; thus widening the distance between the banks, but adding much to the variety and beauty of the views presented. At the bottom, like a silvery ribbon, rushed the stream from rapid to rapid, foaming among the rocks, and decked with the gay blossoms of the oleander along its margin. It was a scene to be visited at leisure and studied for hours. But we hastened on. "I could not, however, resist the temptation to turn aside and examine a curiosity of which I had heard at Hasbeiya—a natural bridge across the Litany; which, from its name Kûweh, I expected to find an elevated perforation through the rock. After traversing the open fields beyond [north of] Yuhmur for a time, I descended into a Wady which came down from the right. The declivity soon became so steep, that I lost my confidence in the feet of my careful horse, who in innumerable defiles of Palestine and Lebanon had never yet betrayed me, and I dismounted. The Wady soon descended by a bound into the river far below; and I, turning to the VOL. VI. No. 22. 32 left around a lofty precipice, continued my descent, having the precipice above and the awful chasm below, with the river roaring at its bottom, and here so narrow as to coop the stream within straitened bounds; While the opposite precipice, near at hand, rose up so high above as to exclude every prospect but the sky. I seemed to be descending into the bowels of the earth; and a fitter haunt for beasts of prey or marauding robbers I never saw. Yet even here nature had her ornaments; and the beautiful oleander smiled upon me from many a nook in the frowning precipice. At length, with knees wearied by the steep and long descent, I reached the bridge, the Kûweh. The river was still many feet below me, running in a channel worn in the rock entirely by its own friction, and so narrow and tortuous as occasionally completely to hide the water from view. The Kûweh has evidently been formed by the falling of masses of rock from the precipices above, which still threaten to throw down more. The fallen masses, spanning the narrow stream, have in time become covered with earth and bushes, and now form a bridge. It is in fact now crossed by a road; for, difficult as I had found the descent, this is one of the roads from Hasbeiya to Deir el-Kamar and Beirût. It ascends, on the other side, a declivity apparently as steep as the one I had descended; and crosses the ridge of Lebanon by a gap somewhere south of Niha." III. KEDESH OF NAPHTALI AND THE HULEH. From the first journal of the Rev. Eli Smith, mentioned above, I extract the following account of the ancient Kedesh of Naphtali, still known as Kedes. The place has seldom been visited by travellers; and, so far as I know, this is the most full and exact account we have of it in modern times. A few notices are added respecting the streams of the Hûleh. On the 23d of April, 1844, Messrs. Smith and Calhoun left the direct road from 'Akka to Hasbeiya at Bint Jebeil; and turned more to the east in order to visit Kedesh. Passing over a high rolling region of country, they came in an hour and a half to the village of Mâlikîyeh, situated in a beautiful though not large plain, in which were growing some very large and old terebinth trees. This plain forms one of the first offsets or steps of descent on this side towards the Hûleh. On the eastern hills, which rise but little, they stopped. "We had here, considerably below us, another step towards the Hûleh, in which, directly beneath us, was the plain of Kedes, separated by hills and a Wady from another plain on the north. We descended immediately and rapidly to Kedes; which we reached, directly at the foot of the hill, in two and a half hours from Bint Jebeil. 1849.] 66 Kedes, the once ancient Kedesh of Naphtali, is on a Tell, resting against the side of the hill which we had descended, with a plain of uncommon loveliness lying before it. On the highest part of the Tell, over which we first passed, is the modern village. A step down from this towards the south-east, an offset projects for some distance towards the plain; but yet at a considerable height above it. Here we encamped in the midst of grass of a luxuriant growth. On the south-west side of the Tell the plain extended up in the form of a narrow valley; in which, just at the foot of the Tell, bursts out a copious spring of the most limpid water. On the opposite side, lower down than the projection just mentioned, there projects another and larger offset; in the centre of which, at its junction with the main Tell, is also another beautiful fountain. "On this lowest part were two ruins, of large hewn stone, apparently of Roman origin. The walls of one, in part, and one door-way, were standing; but we saw no traces of columns. Between the two ruins were some uncommonly large sarcophagi, which we conjectured to be older, but we could discover no inscriptions; one or two of them were double. In the village above, we saw one or two columns lying on the ground. "Everything indicated that this was once a large and important place, And well it may have been; for I have rarely seen a place with which I was so much charmed. The abundant supply of water has been mentioned. The plain, three or four miles long, from north to south, and a mile wide, is perfectly level, and has the fertility of an alluvial bottom. The eastern hills in front are low and partly wooded. They hide the Hûleh; but you see over them the vast table-land of Jeidúr, extending from the foot of Jebel esh-Sheikh to the Jaulon, with its groves and luxuriant pasturage, and now spotted everywhere with the black tents of the 'Anazeh Arabs; while Jebel esh-Sheikh, with its snowy summits, rose up in all its majesty full before us. "The present village is occupied by people from Haurâu, who had moved over but a few months before. Previously it was nearly or quite deserted. It was interesting to remark, in this case as well as in that of Malikiyeh, how the country of the Metàwileh is becoming the asylum of the oppressed. This is owing to the present upright and mild but firm government of Hamid el-Beg and Husein Suleimân, hereditary sheikhs of the family of 'Aly ez-Zŭghìr, who now jointly govern the districts of Besharah and Shukif. In passing through the territory twice, I have never heard them otherwise than well spoken of, whether by Muslims or Christians. The people here had fled from Hauràn, to escape the depredations of the nomadic Arabs on the one hand, and the enormous exactions of the Damascus government on the other. "The following bearings, among others, were here taken : “Khureibeh is a Tell, apparently with ruins on it, at the south end of the plain of Kedes. Just there, in a deep ravine, the Wady el-Mu'adhdhamìyeh, known before in going from Safed to Bint Jebeil, finds its way into the plain of the Huleh at the fountain of Mellabah. By this fountain there rises a conical peak from the superjacent mountain, which serves as an important landmark." There is some reason for supposing that el-Khureibeh marks the site of the ancient Hazor.2 "Benit appears as the point of a higher and distant table-land." It was from Benit that Mr. Smith and myself obtained a view of the basin of the Hûleh in 1838.3 The travellers left Kedes the next morning, and in half an hour reached the eastern edge of the plain. "It here extended up in a small offset into the eastern hills; but there was no outlet, nor did any appear anywhere. Indeed, this portion seemed the lowest, and was covered in part with water; which however seemed fast drying up. Coming in a few minutes to the eastern declivity of the hills, we ascended a point on the right, which commanded a magnificent view of the whole basin of the Hûleb. "Our principal object was to discern the course of the rivers; but from this position it could not be determined. They appeared at one point, and disappeared in another; and finally seemed entirely lost in the marsh before entering the lake." Two days afterwards they were informed by an old man resident at Tell el-Kady, that the four rivers which enter the Hûleh, viz. that from Bàniàs, the Leddàn from Tell el-Kàdy, the Hasbàny, and the Derderah from Merj 'Ayûn, all unite below Salihiyeh a large encampment of Arabs in the Húleh, near a cluster of trees. In the afternoon of the same day they crossed the high ground above Abil, on their way to the castle of Shukîf. "This position gave us the most distinct view we had of the rivers of the Hûleh. It produced the conviction of certainty, that the rivers do not continue distinct to the lake. We could clearly see the junction of two of them, the Hasbauy and that from Bàniàs, at the point above specified, below Salihiyeh; and these form but one stream below that point. I was not sure but that the Hasbâny and Leddan unite a little higher up; but Hasbeiyans well acquainted with the Hûleh assured me afterwards, that the three rivers form a junction at the p. 370. 1 Bibl. Res. in Palest. III. 2 See Biblioth. Sac. May 1847, p. 403. |