stamps of Lebanon &apos;s Dog River . by Wilfrid T F Castle . taxi ! you go Jerusalem ? taxi here , sir ! Amman ? yes ? taxi Damascus , yes please ? taxi Baalbeck . you wan na go Baalbeck ? taxi ! taxi ! the philatelic traveller landing at Beyrouth or trying to make his way to the general post office to buy some Lebanese stamps , soon concludes that he has never seen so many ultra-modern luxury cars in his life or so many drivers willing to take him where he does n&apos;t happen to be going . one persistent taxi follows him through the street , crawling by the sidewalk , its optimistic driver repeating at intervals . taxi ? you like to go Dog River ? it is the last bid of a Dutch auction ! why on earth should anyone want to go to the Dog River ? especially a stamp collector on his way to buy some Lebanese stamps ! yet if the stamp collector knows even a few words of Arabic the invitation to go the twelve kilometres along the northern coastal road to the Dog River will ring a bell . Dog River - Nahr el-Kelb ! why , that &apos;s one of the best known stamp scenes in the eastern Mediterranean ! a picture flashes to mind : a graceful old three-arched bridge , a river flowing through a rocky valley to the sea . how many Lebanese stamps have pictured this typical view ? oh , very well then , take me to the Dog River , please &amp;hellip; . jump in , sir ! so off we go with the sea on the left and the tumbled mass of Mount Lebanon with its hundreds of valleys and villages on the right - off to see a well-known stamp scene with a fascinating story - a scene straight out of the current Gibbons part 3 but a story that goes back some two thousand years B.C . first of all , a look at the design illustrated in the catalogue . the first stamp to show the Nahr el-Kelb and its bridge was the 0 p.50 postage due label of 1925 , as the scene was not chosen for the first set of definitive pictorials issued in that year . S.G.D.11 was a photogravure job by Vaugirard of Paris on yellow tinted paper and in common with all the early pictorials printed by Vaugirard was designed by J de la Nezi&amp;eacute;re . the first definitive postage stamp with this view was the 4 piastre value of the 1930 pictorial series ( S.G.171 ) which Gibbons illustrate as type 16 . the designer and printer are the same , and in common with nearly all Lebanese stamps the caption below the frame gives designer , printer and subject . this is another photogravure - or as this printer calls it heliogravure - job . during the second world war , however , the Lebanon , then a republic somewhat unwillingly under French mandate , was cut off from communication with the Vaugirard printers in Paris and a serious start was made in printing do-it-yourself offset lithographed stamps in Beyrouth . ( as early as 1930 six silk congress commemoratives had been typographed locally . ) under war conditions the last stamp to arrive from Paris was a solitary 5 piastre value printed in recess , and this was in the Nahr el-Kelb design - Gibbons called it type 16 as the design is similar to the photogravure stamp but the format is larger and it is in a rather bold style of recess painting . the colour is green-blue . alone of all the 1930 pictorials the Nahr el-Kelb was perpetuated in this way , and had history turned out differently others of the series might have followed with new values and colours and in recess engraving . but France fell and the French mandatory authorities in the Lebanon found themselves out in the cold . British and free French forces entered the Lebanon and there was fighting and confusion until the signing of the convention of Acre on July 14th , 1941 . there was by then no possibility of any more recess printed stamps coming from France . indeed the French mandate itself was doomed . with British backing and local enthusiasm the Lebanese republic became an independent sovereign state on November 27th , 1941 . as a stamp subject the Nahr el-Kelb survived the great political change . first came wartime stop-gap overprints . among them the recess printed 5 piastre value received overprints altering the duty to 2 or 3 piastres ( S.G.261 and 262 ) . miniature cedar trees are used to block out the original value . it was not until 1947 that the Nahr el-Kelb scene again appeared on stamps . in that year four airmail stamps in offset lithography were printed in Beyrouth to commemorate the evacuation of all foreign forces from the republic ( S.G.334-337 ) . the centre of this design - Gibbons type 48 - shows the familiar bridge and river and on the right hand side of the design appears one of the inscribed rock tablets that are the unique feature of this scene . presumably this tablet in Arabic commemorates the same event as does the stamp , and dates from 1947 . the attractive bridge which forms the central feature in all these stamp designs was built in its present form by the Emir Bechir Chehab during the years 1828-29 . so says an inscription on a stone tablet on the bridge itself . another inscription chiselled in the rock at the south end of the bridge states that a bridge was built here by Sultan Selim 1 , the Ottoman Turkish conqueror of Lebanon , Syria , Palestine and Egypt who added these lands to his empire in 1516-17 . but it is known that a Circassian Sultan of Egypt and Syria called Bargoug or Berkuk , who ruled from Cairo during the years 1382-99 , built a bridge here on the eve of the terrible Mongol invasions . probably Saracens , crusaders , Byzantines and Romans built or repaired bridges at this spot . modern road and railway bridges take the lines of communication of to-day between Beyrouth and the north past the place where the mountain comes right down to the sea shore and the Dog River or Nahr el-Kelb has to be crossed . there is little width for the road , especially between the headland of Ras el-Kelb ( which terminates the southern bank of the river ) and the sea . in olden times the road was a narrow track clinging to the rocky face of the headland before descending to the earliest of the bridges that have carried it across the river . later a Roman road took a more favourable route at a lower level . constructed by order of the Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antonius about A.D 173 it was reconstructed in Byzantine times . all through history people have been passing this spot and the rock face by the roadside offered the opportunity for conquerors down the ages to engrave records of their passage . they have inscribed panels up to ten feet in height in Arabic , English , French , Greek , Latin , cuneiform , Assyrian and hieroglyphic Egyptian witnessing to the deeds of such diverse heroes as Rameses 2 , Esarhaddon , Nebuchadnezzar , Napoleon 3 , General Allenby and United Kingdom , Australian , New Zealand and Indian troops . our stamps show but one page of the world &apos;s most gigantic visitors &apos; book ! before looking at the rest of the Dog River stamps we must now answer the question of why this river is so called . Egyptian god . the most up-to-date explanation is that the river was once connected with the Egyptian cult of the god Anubis , represented as a jackal or wolf , sometimes as a human figure with a jackal &apos;s or dog &apos;s head . popularly he was looked upon as the dog god who showed the way to the land of the dead and is supposed to have come to Lebanon with the cult of Isis and Osiris . in this cult Isis , searching for her dead lover , was guided by the dog Anubis , who became her guide and companion . be that as it may , at some early period an enormous statue of a dog or similar animal was erected on the headland of Ras el-Kelb ( Dog Head ) above the road and it is believed that this statue was vocal . the wind made it howl or bark . the sound was so strong that legend insists that the animal awoke the echoes of far-distant Cyprus with his bark . it must have been a strange experience on a stormy night to hear the sound coming over the water , even if the range was less than 125 miles ! the Greeks called the river Lykos Potamus and the Romans lycus flumen - both alike meaning wolf River . thus the Egyptian dog - or was he a jackal ? - became a wolf , and the wolf an Arab dog . before exploring upstream to look at some other stamp scenes we must examine the later stamps showing the old bridge . these lack the elaborate arabesque frames of earlier types ; the bridge is more prominent and fills the scene , and despite the Druze , the Circassian and the Turk whose names are associated with its construction , the caption is pont Arabe sur Nahr el-Kelb . perhaps this is to honour the men who probably did the actual work of building ! the issue of 1950 has five stamps designated by Gibbons as type 66 , designed by P Koroleff and printed in offset lithography by the imprimerir catholique at Beyrouth ( S.G.411-415 ) . at first glance these stamps appear to be in photogravure and they certainly reproduce the characteristics of an original photograph , not a line drawing . the offset lithographed issue of 1951 ( S.G.433-437 ) consists , on the other hand , of stamps designed by Mr Koroleff as line drawings - Gibbons type 74 . at least two very distinct shades should be looked for : the 12 p.50 value comes in both bright and dull turquoise and the 50 piastre in both light and dark green . in 1957 the same design reappeared in new colours and with the inscription R&amp;eacute;publique Libanaise replaced by simply Liban . these stamps formed a short set of three values ( S.G.561-563 ) . we have lingered long enough by the bridge . away we go , now upstream where the bright little river dashes along through a glen which opens the very heart of the mountain to see the Jeita Grottos , subject of the five vertical pictorials of the March 1955 definitives . ( two full sets of definitive pictorials every year could easily kill all philatelic interest in Lebanon ! ) these are S.G.514-518 . three huge caves take the name of Jeita Grottos from the nearby village of Jeita , variously spelt Gita or Ghita . out of the first cave rushes a large part of the river ; the second penetrates under the mountain and then descends into an abyss with parallel and branching passages , one of which gives access to the lowest cave . the third and largest cavern has a gallery or corridor and again we meet the river as it descends , crossing the cave and disappearing at the north-west corner with a thundering roar . above the caves the banks of the Nahr el-Kelb are formed of shattered cliffs of grey limestone nearly 2,000 feet high . various tributaries come in , a waterfall roars over a rocky ledge , and then we reach a point where the river is spanned by a gigantic natural bridge , one of the geological wonders of the world . natural bridge . the natural bridge is the Jisr el-Hajr or Jisr Hajar ( stone Bridge ) and as it is a little to the south of the last village on a road which leads up from Djounie on the coast , the village of Fareiya or Faraya , it is described on the two stamps which depict it as pont naturel , Faraya . these are the two lowest values of the red cross airmail stamps of 1947 ( S.G.338-339 ) . the stamps hardly convey a true impression of this massive bridge , but though handicapped by being in offset lithography the set as a whole is among the more highly priced of Lebanese stamps , the thematic appeal being two-fold . the Jisr Hajar of Faraya is an elliptical arch of hard stone , slightly oblique but with regular abutments . above the bridge the southern arm of the stream can be followed to its source at the Neba el-Lebn or milk Fountain . another arm to the north-east rises at the Neba el-Asul or honey Fountain . hereabouts the country is wild and bare . 