"May God salute you! go in peace!"
It is never without a pang that the traveller leaves the Druze country behind, and never without registering a vow to return to it as soon as may be.
THE SHEIKH'S HOUSE, ḤAYĀT
Having passed under the protection of the Sultan, I found that my road next day lay across a really dangerous bit of country. The Circassians and Turks of Brāk (the Turks were charming people from the northern parts of Asia Minor) dissuaded me strongly from taking the short cut across the hills to Damascus, so strongly that I had almost abandoned the idea. They said the hills were infested by robbers and probably empty of Arab encampments at this time of year, so that the robbers had it all their own way. Fortunately next morning we heard of a company of soldiers who were said to be riding to Damascus across the hills, and the report encouraged us to take the same path. We never saw them, and I do not believe that they had any real existence; on the other hand, we did see some black tents which gave us confidence at the worst bit of the road, and the robbers must have been otherwise engaged for they did not appear. But I noted with interest, firstly, that desert life comes to within an hour or two of Damascus, a fact I had not been able to observe before when I went by the high road, and secondly that the Sultan's peace, if peace it can be called, ceases almost at the walls of the chief city of Syria. We crossed the Nahr el 'Awāj, which is the Pharpar, and reached soon after midday the Circassian village of Nejhā, where I stopped to lunch under a few poplars, the first grove of trees I had seen since we left Salt. Whether you ride to Damascus by a short cut or by a high road, from the Ḥaurān or from Palmyra, it is always further away than any known place. Perhaps it is because the traveller is so eager to reach it, the great and splendid Arab city set in a girdle of fruit trees and filled with the murmur of running water. But if he have only patience there is no road that will not end at last; and we, too, at the last came to the edge of the apricot gardens and then to the Bawābet Ullaḥ, the Gates of God, and so passed into the Meidān, the long quarter of shops and khāns stretching out like the handle to a great spoon, in the bowl of which lie the minarets and domes of the rich quarters. By four o'clock I was lodged in the Hotel Victoria, and had a month's post of letters and papers in my hands.
[7]Dussaud, "Mission Scientific," p. 64. The translation of the inscriptions I owe to the kindness of Dr. Littmann, who will include the original copies in his "Semitic Inscriptions."
[CHAPTER VII]
When I had come to Damascus five years before, my chief counsellor and friend—a friend whose death will be deplored by many a traveller in Syria—was Lütticke, head of the banking house of that name and honorary German consul. It was a chance remark of his that revealed to me the place that the town had and still has in Arab history. "I am persuaded," said he, "that in and about Damascus you may see the finest Arab population that can be found anywhere. They are the descendants of the original invaders who came up on the first great wave of the conquest, and they have kept their stock almost pure."