feet high, and they are closely joined together without the use of mortar.  Just around the corner are three others still larger, and built in the wall about twenty feet above the foundation.  Their lengths are given as follows:  sixty-three feet; sixty-three feet and eight inches; and sixty-four feet.  They are thirteen feet high and about ten feet thick.  Some may be interested in knowing how such large building blocks were moved.  McGarvey says:  “It is explained by the carved slabs found in the temple of Nineveh, on which are sculptured representations of the entire process.  The great rock was placed on trucks by means of levers, a large number of strong ropes were tied to the truck, a smooth track of heavy timbers was laid, and men in sufficient number to move the mass were hitched to the ropes.”  Some of the smaller stones have holes cut in them, as if for bars, levers, or something of that kind, but the faces of these big blocks are smooth.  “A man must visit the spot, ride round the exterior, walk among the ruins, sit down here and there to gaze upon its more impressive features, see the whole by sunlight, by twilight, and by moonlight, and allow his mind leisurely to rebuild it and re-people it, ere he can comprehend it.”—­McGarvey.

There were some of the native girls out by the ruins who tried to sell me some of their needle work, but I was not disposed to buy.  One of them attempted to make a sale by saying something like this:  “You’re very nice, Mister; please buy one.”  I told her there was a little girl in America who thought that, too, and went on.  There is a rock in the quarry at Baalbec that is larger than any of those in the ruins, although it was never entirely cut out, the length of which is sixty-eight feet, and the width varies from about thirteen feet at one end to seventeen feet at the other.  It is about fourteen feet thick, and the estimated weight is fifteen hundred tons.  Some of the stones in a ruined building, once a tomb, standing on the hill above the town, give forth a metallic ring when struck.  Farther on is a small cemetery, in which some of the headstones and footstones are as much as nine feet apart.  If the people buried there were that long, surely “there were giants in the land in those days.”  I went down on the opposite side of the hill from the tomb and entered a vineyard, where an old man treated me with kindness and respect.  The modern town is poorly built of small stones and mud, but there are some good buildings of dressed stone, among which I may mention the British Syrian School and the Grand New Hotel.  I staid at another hotel, where I found one of those pre-occupied beds which travelers in the East so often find.  About midnight, after I had killed several of the little pests, I got up and shaved by candle-light, for I wasn’t sleepy, and there was no use to waste the time.