This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1838 edition. Excerpt: ...interior and over the entrance some interesting sculptures. The soil of the Bakaah is rich, but the ground is entirely covered with large stones. As population is scanty and land plentiful, a sufficient inducement to undertake the trouble Young's Night Thoughts. PLOUGHS AND GOADS. 267 of clearing the valley is wanting; and it consequently remains almost entirely uncultivated; but the appearance of extraordinary desolation which stamped it at the time of our visit was in part attributable to the unwonted severity of the then recent winter. The snow was still lying in large patches at the foot of the two parallel chains of hills, while the angry torrents rushing into the valley had carried away nearly every vestige of a road, and greatly impeded the traveller's progress. The few peasants we met complained bitterly of their loss of cattle, saying that, owing to the intensity of the late cold, nearly all the females among the animals had died. The ploughs are of the simplest possible construction. A long pole parallel to the ground has one end curved so as to raise it over the neck of the oxen. Across the other a second piece of wood is fixed at an angle of 110 or 130; one extremity of which enters the ground; the other serves as a handle. The goad with which the cattle are urged is nothing more than a stick, furnished with an iron point and a heavy hoe-shaped piece of metal for scraping mud off the plough. It was probably with some such weapon as this, by no means inoffensive, that Shamgar, 268 BAALBEC. the " deliverer of Israel," slew six hundred of the Philistines. The valley leads direct to the desert in which Palmyra stands; and the temptation to extend our tour to that famous scene of ruins was great; but a fear of encountering the heat...