We resolved to advance slowly, to examine every object, and to follow the most indirect paths. Hence our march to Palmyra occupied eight days; we returned, however, in four with horses that called loudly for a week’s rest. The regular stations are as follows:—
| Hours. | |
| 1. Damascus to Jayrud | 9 |
| 2. Jayrud to Karyatayn | 10-11 |
| 3. Karyatayn to Agu el Waah | 8 |
| 4. Agu el Waah to Palmyra | 9 |
On the second day we dismissed our escort, one officer and two privates of irregular cavalry, who were worse than useless, and we slept at the house of Daas Agha, hereditary Chief of Jayrud. A noted sabre, and able to bring one hundred and fifty lances into the field,
he was systematically neglected by the authorities, because supposed to be friendly with foreigners. Shortly after my departure he barbarously tortured two wretched Arabs, throwing them into a pit full of fire, and practising upon them with his revolver. Thereupon he was at once taken into prime favour, and received a command.
Daas Agha escorted us from Jayrud with ten of his kinsmen mounted upon their best mares. In the upland valley we suffered severely from cold, and the sleety sou’wester which cut our faces on the return was a caution.
At Karyatayn, which we reached on the fifth day, Osman Bey, who was waiting for rations, money, transport, in fact, everything, offered us the most friendly welcome, and I gave official protection to Shaykh Faris, in connection with the English post at Baghdad. The former detached with us eighty bayonets of regulars and twenty-five sabres of Irregulars, commanded by two officers. This body presently put to flight anything in the way of Bedouin; a war party of two thousand men would not have attacked us; and I really believe that a band of thirty Englishmen armed with carbines and revolvers could sweep clean the Desert of the Euphrates from end to end.
At Karyatayn we hired seventeen camels to carry water. This would have been a complete waste of money had we gone, like other travellers, by the Darb el Sultain, or High Way. Some three hours’ ride to the right, or south, of the road amongst the hills
bounding the Palmyra Valley is a fine cistern (Ibex Fountain), where water is never wanting. There is, however, a still more direct road viâ the remains of an aqueduct and a river in the desert. This short cut from Karyatayn to Palmyra may be covered in twenty-four hours of camel walking, fifteen of horse walking, and twelve by dromedary or hard gallop. Travellers would start at 6.30 or 7 a.m., and encamp after being out from twelve to thirteen hours; but this includes breakfast and sundry halts, sometimes to inspect figures, real or imaginary, in the distance, at other times to indulge in a “spurt” after a gazelle or a wild boar.
We chose, however, the little-known Baghdad, or eastern, road. The next day we rested at a large deserted khan, and on the eighth we made our entrance into Palmyra, where we were hospitably received by Shaykh Faris. Our muleteers, for the convenience of their cattle, pitched their tents close to, and east of, the so-called Grand Colonnade, a malarious and unwholesome site. They should have encamped amongst the trees at a threshing-floor near three palms. Travellers may be strongly advised not to lodge in the native village, whose mud huts, like wasps’ nests, are all huddled within the ancient Temple of the Sun, or they may suffer from fever or ophthalmia. The water of Tadmor is sulphurous, like Harrogate, the climate is unhealthy, and the people are ragged and sickly. May there, as in most parts of the northern hemisphere, is the best travelling-season, and in any but a
phenomenal year the traveller need not fear to encounter, as we did, ice and snow, siroccos and furious sou’westers.