“There may be,” admitted the old pedagogue; “but we do not know about them. At least, Damascus is the oldest city we know anything about.”
“That is quite true. If you had said that——”
“Now look here, Richard, you are inclined to be altogether too wise. You keep yourself too well posted about the countries and places we visit, and thus you deprive me of the privilege of imparting information to you. It isn’t right. You make me feel that I am not earning my stipend as your guardian and tutor during this trip round the world. You place me in an embarrassing position. I wish you would feign ignorance, if you cannot do anything else.”
Dick laughed.
“All right, professor; I’ll try to reform. But it was your advice to us that we should post ourselves in advance on each place we visited, and I’ve been obeying instructions, that’s all.”
“Haw! Hum! You’re inclined to be too obedient—altogether too obedient. Now here is Bradley—I haven’t observed that he has wasted much time reading up about different countries and cities.”
“Sure not,” admitted the Texan. “It’s a heap too much trouble, for I know I’ll hear about the places from you and Dick when we hit ’em. This yere country sort of looks familiar.”
“It does,” nodded Dick. “To me it looks like Southern Colorado or Northern New Mexico. It’s a land of irrigation. The mountains, the plains, the foliage, the mud houses, everything but the people, remind me of that portion of our own country.”
“Quite true,” agreed Zenas Gunn; “although the fertile spots here have all been taken up and cultivated. For instance, look there, boys—look at that mountainside.”
Gazing from the window as the train sped along, they could see the side of a mountain walled up in terraces like gigantic stairways, to prevent the soil from being washed away by the rainfalls. These terraces were planted with grapes, figs, olive and mulberry trees. On many of these terraces laborers were at work propping up strange-looking trunks, which were six or seven feet high. In places these trunks could be seen reclining in rows on the ground, looking strangely like sleeping soldiers.