THE SOUTHERN ROUTE SELECTED. 57 



approaching Ali Pasha, the general at the head of the 

 " extraordinary command " in Aleppo, and asking for an 

 escort and permission to proceed, I was met with a 

 polite but firm refusal. Permission, then, to travel by 

 this route not being forthcoming, there remained the 

 northern route by Diarbekr and the southern one by 

 Deir and the Sinjar Mountains. Under certain con- 

 ditions in the dim future, a branch line is to be con- 

 structed from some point on the Baghdad line to 

 Diarbekr, and it was even rumoured in Constantinople 

 that the main line itself might after all pass that way ; 

 but despite these facts I decided to travel by the 

 southern route, since the more northern was already 

 well known to me from the descriptions given of it 

 by others, and the country traversed by the southern is 

 all part of the same plain, and presents the same par- 

 ticulars as the tract between the Euphrates and the 

 Tigris vid Harran and E,as-el-Ain, through which the 

 railway is to be constructed. 



Accordingly, after a short rest in Aleppo, I set out 

 on the morning of the 15th January in a direction 

 slightly south of east. From Aleppo to the Euphrates 

 at Meskineh the track lies over vast stretches of un- 

 dulating ground, practically treeless (except in the 

 immediate vicinity of the town itself, where groves of 

 olives and pistachio-trees are seen), though large tracts 

 of it are under cultivation. Once through the groves 

 which surround the town, there is nothing to relieve 

 the monotony of the dreary reaches of an almost 

 featureless expanse beyond occasional small villages, 

 resembling bunched-up conglomerations of giant clay 

 beehives, and a number of artificial mounds which are 

 scattered over the country, or the saline waters of the 

 salt Lake Jebul, which may be seen to the south shim- 

 mering in the sun. 



