tall isolated mountain, which is crowned by the
crumbling castle of Banias, the stateliest ruin of that kind on earth, no
doubt. It is a thousand feet long and two hundred wide, all of the most
symmetrical, and at the same time the most ponderous masonry. The
massive towers and bastions are more than thirty feet high, and have been
sixty. From the mountain's peak its broken turrets rise above the groves
of ancient oaks and olives, and look wonderfully picturesque. It is of
such high antiquity that no man knows who built it or when it was built.
It is utterly inaccessible, except in one place, where a bridle-path
winds upward among the solid rocks to the old portcullis. The horses'
hoofs have bored holes in these rocks to the depth of six inches during
the hundreds and hundreds of years that the castle was garrisoned. We
wandered for three hours among the chambers and crypts and dungeons of
the fortress, and trod where the mailed heels of many a knightly Crusader
had rang, and where Phenician heroes had walked ages before them.

We wondered how such a solid mass of masonry could be affected even by an
earthquake, and could not understand what agency had made Banias a ruin;
but we found the destroyer, after a while, and then our wonder was
increased tenfold. Seeds had fallen in crevices in the vast walls; the
seeds had sprouted; the tender, insignificant sprouts had hardened; they
grew larger and larger, and by a steady, imperceptible pressure forced
the great stones apart, and now are bringing sure destruction upon a
giant work that has even mocked the earthquakes to scorn! Gnarled and
twisted trees spring from the old walls every where, and beautify and
overshadow the gray battlements with a wild luxuriance of foliage.

From these old towers we looked down upon a broad, far-reaching green
plain, glittering with the pools and rivulets which are the sources of
the sacred river Jordan. It was a grateful vision, after so much desert.

And as the evening drew near, we clambered down the mountain, through
groves of the Biblical oaks of Bashan, (for we were just stepping over
the border and entering the long-sought Holy Land,) and at its extreme
foot, toward the wide valley, we entered this little execrable village of
Banias and camped in a great grove of olive trees near a torrent of
sparkling water whose banks are arrayed in fig-trees, pomegranates and
oleanders in full leaf. Barring the proximity of the village,