Baalbec, From the Fountain

Roberts found his time in Baalbec immensely inspiring and seven of his watercolours of the ruins were later to be lithographed and included in The Holy Land series. This lithograph shows the eastern portico of the Great Temple by moonlight. Roberts describes the scene in his diaries: 'About half an hour's walk up the valley leading to the mountains through which flows the beautiful stream to which the plain owes its fertility, is the fountain from whence it springs. It rises in a great body from under the ruins of two semi-circular basins, the most pure, the most limpid and the sweetest water I have ever tasted. In the centre are the ruins of an artificial fountain. It is the very spot that imagination would select for the Naiads [nymphs]. Here is the bubbling fountain around which the grass seems smoother and greener than anywhere else; the mountains of Lebanon tower above, covered with eternal snow rivalling in whiteness the clouds in which they are enveloped, whilst the sides of this lovely valley are still covered with fruit trees in all the gaiety of their summer clothing.’

Roberts and his party left Baalbec on the 8th of May and although he had wanted to try and visit Damascus, he changed his mind and instead travelled on to Beirut - which he reached two days later. He liked the city, describing it as delightfully situated with a perfect climate and on the 12th of May he met up with John Kinnear, with whom he had travelled between Cairo and Jaffa. On the 14th of May he boarded a ship for Alexandria, and he arrived back in London, via Malta, Gibraltar, Cadiz and Lisbon, on the 21st of July.