Breakfast again of tea and toast, when Jona and I, with a guard of twelve horsemen, started for a run over the hilly plain which lay between us and the ruins, leaving the wives and other luggage to come along with the caravan, which would reach Tadmor some time before next morning. Before starting I promised our escorts a piece of silver each if we should reach the ruins in an hour.
The morning was bright and the ride was inspiring, but very tame compared to the wild ride at Nazzip, for we ran steadily on over the sand-drifted desert, while the sweat on the horses' necks soon worked into a foam; and although the distance was nearer twenty-five than twenty miles, we reined up to the temple of the sun in about ninety minutes, when I gave two pieces of silver to each, for which they carried me in their arms through the ancient archway where there were once swinging gates nearly sixty feet in height, through which Solomon had many times passed. Then they lugged me to the market and coaxed me to buy them a camel bone for soup, which I did, on the promise that I was to have some of the soup, but I forgot to come around on time.
RUINS OF TADMOR, WHERE I BADE FAREWELL TO JONA, HIS FAVORITE, AND THE GRATEFUL FATIMA.
THE ABANDONED CASTLE
Jona, as I expected, found the castle, but no relative in Tadmor; nor anyone who had ever heard who built or occupied the Fort-Castle on the rocks overlooking the city. I then questioned him again as to whether there had ever been such a family tradition concerning Mary Magdalene as he had related, to which he stoutly maintained there had been, and that Mary Magdalene, the fair Galilean Goddess whose life was interwoven into the family of Jesus of Nazareth, had once been a bright feature in the traditional tree of the Rechabites, but when or by whom it was introduced he did not know.
With Jona's plat of the ancient ruins, we passed up through the once beautiful city, where the immense granite columns from Egypt still stand single, in groups and in lines, retaining their caps, crowns and arches.