SYRIA, THE LAND OF LEBANON
Lycus or "Wolf" River. It is said to have received its present name from a marvelous statue of a dog set above the cliffs, which opened its stone mouth and barked lustily at the approach of a hostile ship. Indeed, to this very day a vivid imagination can discern the likeness of a huge mastiff in a certain boulder, now submerged in the center of the stream.
The pass up its rocky gorge has been trod by many a great army. The well-preserved bridge which now spans the stream was built by the sultan Selim four hundred years ago; but a Latin inscription on the cliff indicates that a military road was constructed here by Marcus Aurelius as early as the second century, and on the sheer rocks at the left bank of the river are cut panels whose records far antedate the days of Roman supremacy. Ashur-nasir-pal, Shalmaneser, Tiglath-pileser, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, Rameses—such are the strange sounding names given to the forms in bas-relief which still lift above the rushing stream the scepters of their long-vanished power. The boastings of Greek and Arabic conquerors are also found along this path of ancient armies and—what seems in such surroundings a weak anti-climax—upon a panel which originally bore one of the Egyptian inscriptions now appears the record of the French expedition of 1860.
Four miles from the mouth of the Dog River, its principal tributary bursts from a cave which extends
[ 34 ]
