THE GIANT STONES OF BAALBEK
high, probably ten feet thick, and their lengths are respectively sixty-three, sixty-three and a half, and sixty-four feet. It is hard to realize their true dimensions, however; for these enormous blocks are set into the wall twenty-three feet above the ground, and are fitted together so closely that you can hardly insert the edge of a penknife between them. Look at them as long as you will, you can never fully see their bigness. Yet if only one were taken out of the wall, a space would be left large enough to contain a Pullman sleeping-car. Each stone, though it seems only of fitting size for this noble acropolis, weighs as much as many a coastwise steamer. If it were cut up into building blocks a foot thick, it would provide enough material to face a row of apartment houses two hundred feet long and six stories high. If it were sawn into flag-stones an inch thick, it would make a pavement three feet wide and over six miles in length.
The quarry from which was taken the material for the temples is about three-quarters of a mile from the acropolis. Here lies a still larger stone which, on account of some imperfection, was never completely separated from the mother rock. By this time we have no breath left for exclamations; hyperbole would be impossible; the simple measurements are astounding enough. The Hajr el-Hibla[1] as it is called, is thirteen feet wide, fourteen feet high, seventy-one
- ↑ Literally, "the stone of the pregnant woman." Bearing in mind the meaning of the popular name, the reader will easily understand just how and why I have modified the frank, Oriental form of the story which follows.
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