of the upper basin contracts into a valley of about 2,000 feet deep, rent at its bottom into a cleft a thousand feet deeper still, down which dashes a river, buried between these stupendous walls of rock.  All above the chasm is terraced as far as the eye can reach with indefatigable industry.  Tiny streamlets bound and leap from terrace to terrace, fertilising them as they rush to join the torrent in the abyss.  Some of the waterfalls are of great height and of considerable volume.  From one spot may be counted no less than seven of these cascades, now dashing in white spray over a cliff, now lost under the shade of trees, soon to reappear over the next shelving rock."[138] Or, to quote from another writer,[139]—­“The descent from the summit is gradual, but is everywhere broken by precipices and towering rocks, which time and the elements have chiselled into strange fantastic shapes.  Ravines of singular wildness and grandeur furrow the whole mountain-side, looking in many places like huge rents.  Here and there, too, bold promontories shoot out, and dip perpendicularly into the bosom of the Mediterranean.  The ragged limestone banks are scantily clothed with the evergreen oak, and the sandstone with pines; while every available spot is carefully cultivated.  The cultivation is wonderful, and shows what all Syria might be of under a good government.  Miniature fields of grain are often seen where one would suppose that the eagles alone, which hover round them, could have planted the seed.  Fig-trees cling to the naked rock; vines are trained along narrow ledges; long ranges of mulberries on terraces like steps of stairs cover the more gentle declivities; and dense groves of olives fill up the bottoms of the glens.  Hundreds of villages are seen, here built amid labyrinths of rock, there clinging like swallows’ nests to the sides of cliffs, while convents, no less numerous, are perched on the top of every peak.  When viewed from the sea on a morning in early spring, Lebanon presents a picture which once seen is never forgotten; but deeper still is the impression left on the mind, when one looks down over its terraced slopes clothed in their gorgeous foliage, and through the vistas of its magnificent glens, on the broad and bright Mediterranean.”

The eastern flank of the mountain falls very far short of the western both in area and in beauty.  It is a comparatively narrow region, and presents none of the striking features of gorge, ravine, deep dell, and dashing stream which diversify the side that looks westward.  The steep slopes are generally bare, the lower portion only being scantily clothed with deciduous oak, for the most part stunted, and with low scrub of juniper and barberry.[140] Towards the north there is an outer barrier, parallel with the main chain, on which follows a tolerably flat and rather bare plain, well watered, and with soft turf in many parts, which gently slopes to the foot of the main ascent, a wall of rock generally half covered