Library › St John Phocas › Pilgrimage in the Holy Land
Pilgrimage in the Holy Land
St John Phocas, tr. Stewart, 1889
Chapter 4
After this mountain-range comes the Mount Libanus, which is very beautiful and renowned in the Scriptures, a very great mountain clad in a robe of snow, hanging from it even as ringlets, overgrown with pine, cedar, and cypress-trees, and adorned with numerous other fruit-bearing trees of various kinds. The side thereof next the sea is inhabited by Christians, while the Saracens dwell on the side that looks towards Damascus and Arabia.1 From its ravines and hollows many rivers gush forth into the sea, beauteous and excessively cold at the time when the snow is melting, and chills the streams which feed them. At the foot of this mountain is Tripolis, which was built by its founder upon a peninsula; for a small spur, branching out from Libanus, runs out into the sea in the shape of a tongue, rising high at its eastern end. Upon the summit of this rising ground the builder of the city laid its foundations. The city is of the very smallest with regard to the extent of ground that it covers, but is worthy of admiration for the height of its walls and the beauty of its buildings.
Notes
- Compare ‘Abbot Daniel,’ lxxxv.