Even Palmyra had to be given up, and, sighing, I turned my face to the west. But I fell in with a French traveller, who had come overland from Bagdad and spent a day at Palmyra, and I listened with boyish interest to his account of what he saw there.
It is no small matter to reach Palmyra, for the reason that it stands in the midst of desolate wastes, which are the possession or at all events the “backsheeshing” ground of the most lawless of the Bedouin Arabs They have no conscientious scruples about robbery; the only point in their favor is that they are averse to shedding blood, and unless he offers resistance, the traveller can feel as certain about saving his life as he is of losing his property. They may strip him of everything and leave him naked, on foot, and without food or drink in the middle of the desert, but they have qualms of conscience about murder, though quite willing their victim should starve or roast to death. Those who assert that the Bedouins are heartless and cruel, should take | note of the above fact, and make an ample apology if they have hitherto said anything uncomplimentary about these plundering blackguards.
It is absolutely necessary to have an escort in going to Palmyra, and one can be found among the Bedouin sheiks, loafing around Damascus. Under their convoy the traveller can consider himself secure; they are pretty honorable in this respect, and after getting a heavy “backsheesh” for safe conduct, they carry out their contracts, though they expect an additional “backsheesh” on their return and the delivery of the traveller to himself, in good order and condition. It is better to leave money and valuables in Damascus, taking only enough coin along to pay trifling expenses, and leaving the compensation of escort and dragoman at the banker’s or consulate. If you are going overland to Bagdad, carry your money in drafts and circular notes, and not in gold. The Bedouin has a sharp eye for money, and much coin is sure to attract it.
The Palmyra journey should be made with camels or dromedaries, for the reason that there are long stretches without water. Horses may be ridden, but there must be one or more camels at any rate to carry water for them. The sheiks always prefer to take no horses, as they can thereby make the journey more quickly, and consequently cheaper.
Well, let us suppose we are going to Palmyra. We have completed all our arrangements, agreed upon the price to be paid, and how to pay it, have arrayed ourselves in Oriental garments, mounted our dromedaries, and filed out of the city. There may be a difficulty in obtaining a sufficient number of dromedaries for the start, and in that case we ride horses to Kuryetien, about! two days’ journey from Damascus. There the sheik will have the necessary animals assembled and waiting our arrival.
We strike away to the northeastward, going at first along a paved road and among the groves and gardens for which the country around Damascus is famous. We meet crowds of people on their way to town, and accompanied by camels and donkeys: bearing the produce of the farms. In some seasons of the year we will meet long strings of camels, which have come from Bagdad, laden with dates, silks, leather goods, and other merchandise from that city; there may be dozens of these in a single party, and sometimes there may be hundreds of them. The drivers are brown, and not over clean; water has been a scarce article among them, and the rivers of Damascus are to their eyes a most welcome sight. One would think that the privations of the desert would inspire no great love for the arid waste, and yet these wild Arabs are so attached to it that they make their stay in the city as brief as possible, and the moment their business is ended they hasten back to their wanderings in the wilderness.
“Give me a pillow of snow,” said a Laplander, breathing his last in a Southern clime, “and I shall die happy.”
“Give me my bed of sand in the desert,” says the Bedouin Arab, “and I shall sleep in peace.”
Every man to his own liking. Tastes are different all the world over.
Ten or twelve miles from Damascus, we leave the groves and shady gardens, and emerge upon a plain irrigated by the waters of the Barada. The plain is cultivated, though generally destitute of arboreal productions, and here and there are the little clumps of trees where the houses of the farmers are embowered. We passed some villages in the groves; we see a little hamlet on the plain to our right, but evidently we were not likely to find a dense population. Now we leave the plain and ascend a some-what rugged path along a barren and rounded mountain which attains an elevation of nearly two thousand feet above the valley of the Barada. In an hour or so we reach the pass, and at the ruin of an old caravansary we look down upon a plain which stretches away like an ocean and fills the eastern horizon.