The ridge of the mountain is everywhere naked limestone rock, except in the comparatively few places which attain the highest elevation, where it is coated or streaked with snow.

Two summits are especially remarkable, that of Jebel Sunnin towards the south, which is a conspicuous object from Beyrout,[134] and is estimated to exceed the height of 9,000 feet,[135] and that of Jebel Mukhmel towards the north, which has been carefully measured and found to fall a very little short of 10,200 feet.[136] The latter, which forms a sort of amphitheatre, circles round and impends over a deep hollow or basin, opening out towards the west, in which rise the chief sources that go to form the romantic stream of the Kadisha.

The sides of the basin are bare and rocky, fringed here and there with the rough knolls which mark the deposits of ancient glaciers, the "moraines" of the Lebanon.

In this basin stand "the Cedars." It is not indeed true, as was for a long time supposed, that the cedar grove of Jebel Mukhmel is the sole remnant of that primeval cedar-forest which was anciently the glory of the mountain.

Cedars exist on Lebanon in six other places at least, if not in more.