[p.49]spring water, and at the end of four hours reached Rahle, a
miserable Druse village, half an hour to the right of the road from
Katana to Rasheia. The ruins are to the north of the village, in the
narrow valley of Rahle, and consist principally of a ruined temple,
built of large square stones, of the same calcareous rock used in the
buildings of Baalbec: little else remains than the foundations, which
are twenty paces in breadth, and thirty in length; within the area of
the temple are the foundations of a circular building. Many fragments of
columns are lying about, and a few extremely well formed capitals of the
Ionic order. Upon two larger stones lying near the gate, which probably
formed the architrave, is the figure of a bird with expanded wings, not
inferior in execution to the bird over the architrave of the great
temple at Baalbec; its head is broken off; in its claws is something of
the annexed form, bearing no resemblance to the usual figure of the
thunderbolt. On the exterior, wall, on the south side of the temple, is
a large head, apparently of a female, three feet and a half high, and
two feet and a half broad, sculptured upon one of the large square
stones which form the wall: its features are perfectly regular, and are
enclosed by locks of hair, terminating in thin tresses under the chin.
This head seems never to have belonged to a whole length figure, as the
stone on which it is sculptured touches the ground. Near the ruins is a
deep well. A few hundred paces to the south, upon an eminence, are the
ruins of another edifice, of which there remain the foundations of the
walls, and a great quantity of broken columns of small size. Around
these edifices are the remains of numerous private habitations; a short
column is found standing in most of them, in the centre of the
foundations of the building. In the neighbouring rocks about a dozen
small cells are excavated, in some of which are cavities for bodies. I
found no inscriptions.