2-995-595 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The town of Beyrout and Mount Lebanon - from a drawing by J. Lewis Farley, 1860. 'Beyrout, Beirout, or Bairut - the Berytus of the ancients - is a fortified seaport and commercial town of Syria, on a bay of the Mediterranean. It is situated fifty-seven miles W.N.W. from Damascus, of which city it is the port...Beyrout was bombarded and taken by the English in 1840, the main object of the attack - the driving out of the troops of Ibrahim Pacha - having been soon accomplished...The situation of Beyrout is exceedingly beautiful, especially as viewed from the sea. The promontory on which it stands is triangular, the apex projecting some three miles into the Mediterranean, and the base running along the foot of Lebanon. The south-western side is wholly composed of loose drifting sand, and has all the aspect of a desert. The north-western side is totally different. The shore line is formed of a range of irregular, deeply-indented rocks and cliffs, worn into a thousand fantastic forms by the waves...The little port, now in a great measure filled up, lies between a projecting cliff and a ruinous insulated tower, called Burj Fanzar, which bears, like the rest of the fortifications, many a mark of British bullets'. From "Illustrated London News", 1860.