The next mid-morning he rode up a chalky ridge and saw the picture that had brought praise to the lips of the prophets of despair, when Israel was a captive with no hope.
It was a vale so enchanting, so perfect, so golden that he doubted his eyes and feared that it was an unreality the desert had fashioned to lure him on to destruction—or another but kindlier dream.
Yellow roadways, slender and winding, wandered hither and thither through emerald oceans of young grain, past ancient vineyards and orchards of olives, and citrons, and groves of walnuts. Yonder was a cluster of palms, pilasters of silver with feathery capitals, and under it was builded a little town—a hive of soft-colored houses, half smothered in delicate green.
Beyond, the roads spread out again, from their convergence in the little settlement, and ran abroad once more between hedges of roses and oleanders, across the River Pharbar, curving midway across the vale like a simitar dropped in the green, through crowding gardens, among low-lying roofs, past spreading villas of the rich, on to a glittering vision of towers, walls, cupolas, white as frost on the head of Mount Tabor in the morning.
At his feet was Caucabe the Star; in the distance was Damascus.
Marsyas drew up his jaded horse and looked, not at the beauty of the scene, for he did not wish to see it now, but down the roads. Over every yellow ribbon his gaze passed until, beyond the limits of the white-towered town, he saw a cluster of small moving figures.
"O rememberer of no wrongs," he said to his horse, "only a little way and thou shall rest and I shall rest!"
He pressed on, past Caucabe the Star, down the hedges of roses between the emerald oceans of young grain and the odorous shade of orchards.
The sun climbed higher, more heated, more merciless; the oleanders gave up their fast fragrance until the night fell again; the vineyards curled, leaf by leaf, the young grain drooped and wilted, the orchards pent in the heat under their boughs, the yellow roads became streaks of brass and the tyrant of the desert stood at its meridian.
Another stadium, and Marsyas drew up his horse sharply.