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The intermediate sizes, some to them weighing ten, twenty, and forty tons, or more, had to be picked up, put approximately into place, and pushed back and forth until they ground themselves into their individually fitting contours. This was no mean chore. It is inferred that means of handling must have existed which made it easy, or at any rate possible, to swing these stones up and around, and to shove them to and fro, against terrific friction, while pinched between their adjacent neighbors. Such power would tax any modern machine or power plant and require an installation of generating equipment sufficient to run a city. It seems plainly obvious that some other source of power existed. ALUMINUM, NON-MAGNETIC METAL HAS & IS NOW BEING MADE TO "FLOAT" IN A FORCE-FIELD, 1948 cyclotron, 2000 WATTS. NEW YORK STATE. It may be that this tremendous power was limited in its application to articles of stone texture only, but this is a little doubtful. Or, perhaps it was limited to nonmagnetic materials in general. Sucha limitation would have sidetracked the development of a mechanized culture such as ours of this day, and would partly account for the strange fact that almost all relics of the profound past are non-metallic. It does seem possible that the usefulness of that power, whatever it was, may have been limited by its very nature and that it was never developed along industrial lines because of this limitation and even, perhaps, because of a basic difference in values. This writer cannot see his way to believing that such a power was electrical, magnetic, calorific, or strictly mechanical, else it would have led to industrial developments leaving at least a few traces. The ruins of Baalbek lie to the northeast of Beirut, between the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern end of the Syrian Desert. The ruins of Baalbek are the most majestic and the most notable of the earth's ancient structures. They have caused more speculation among scientists generally, and archaeologists in particular, than any other group of ruins on earth, for it is usually conceded that there has never been found a single vestige of information intimating or showing when, or by what people, they were created. | have several descriptions of these ruins before me. The one of all others which, it seems to me, would appeal to the layman, as strongly as to the scientist is Mark Twain's, and as this book is written for the people, his description is the one | have selected to use: At eleven o'clock our eyes fell upon the walls and columns of Baalbek, a notable ruin, whose history is a sealed book. It has stood there for thousands of years, the wonder and admiration of travelers. Who built it is a question that may never be answered. One thing is sure though, such grandeur of design, and such grace of execution as one sees in the temples of Baalbek, have not been equaled or even approached in any other work of man's hands that has ever been built within the last twenty centuries. The great Temple of the Sun, the Temple of Jupiter, and the several smaller temples are clustered together in the midst of these Syrian villages miserably dirty. They look strange enough in such plebian company. These temples are built upon massive sub-structures that might support a world almost. The material used is blocks of stone as large as an omnibus, very few of them are smaller than a carpenter's tool chest. These structures are traversed by tunnels of masonry through which a train of cars might pass. With such foundations as these it is little wonder that Baalbek has lasted so long. The temple of the Sun is nearly 300 feet long and 160 feet wide. It has 54 columns around it, but only six are standing now; the others lie broken at its base, a confused and picturesque mass. Corinthian capitals and entablatures, and six more shapely columns do not exist. These columns and their entablatures together are ninety feet high, a_ prodigious altitude for shafts of stone to reach, and yet one only thinks of their beauty and symmetry when looking at them. The pillars look slender and delicate, the entablatures with their elaborate sculpture look like rich stucco work, but when gazed aloft until your eyes are weary you glance at the great fragments of pillars among which you are not standing and find that they are eight feet thick, and with them lie beautiful capitals (?) apparently as large as a small cottage, and also single slabs of stone superbly sculptured that are four or five feet thick and would completely cover the floor of any ordinary parlor. 106