[p.35] village in two hours after quitting Hasbeya. Between Souk el Khan
and Hereibe lies the village Ferdous. Hereibe is considerably higher
than the river. All this neighbourhood is planted with olive-trees; and
olives, from hence to Damascus, are the most common food of the
inhabitants, who put them into salt, but they do not thereby entirely
remove the bitter taste. At Aleppo and Damascus, olives destined for the
table are immersed for a fortnight in water, in which are dissolved one
proportion of chalk and two proportions of alkali; this takes away all
bitterness, but the fruit is at the same time deprived of a part of its
flavour.
On the west side of the village of Hereibe stands a ruined temple, quite
insulated; it is twenty paces in length, and thirteen in breadth; the
entrance is towards the west, and it had a vestibule in front with two
columns. On each side of the entrance are two niches one above the
other, the upper one has small pilasters, the lower one is ornamented on
the top by a shell, like the niches in the temple at Baalbec. The door-
way, which has no decoration whatever, opens into a room ten paces
square, in which no columns, sculpture, or Ornaments of any kind are
visible; three of the walls only are standing. At the back of this
chamber is a smaller, four paces and a half in breadth, by ten in
length, in one corner of which is a half-ruined staircase, leading to
the top of the building; in this smaller room are four pilasters in the
four angles; under the large room are two spacious vaults. On the
outside of the temple, at the east corners, are badly wrought pilasters
of the Ionic order. The roof has fallen in, and fills up the interior.
The stone employed is of the same quality as that used at Heusn Nieha
and Baalbec.
From Hereibe I came to the spring Ain Ferkhan in one hour; and from
thence, in three quarters of an hour, to the village