24 BASHAX. 



skirted, lay "beneatla us on the left. The landscape re- 

 minded me much of some of the finer parts of South 

 "Wales, but its beauty was marred by the low clouds which 

 scudded across the sky, and promised us a wetting before 

 long. Near a beautiful fountain, encased in broken 

 masonry, and ornamented with rich evergreen shrubs, the 

 source of the before-mentioned stream, we passed some 

 ruins too dilapidated for our unskilled eyes to make any- 

 thing out of them. They seemed, for the most part, to be 

 the remains of small houses built against the rocks, with 

 caves at their back, which had served for cellars or store- 

 houses. We rode up a succession of picturesque glades, 

 opening one out of another, till we reached a ridge 

 north-east of the tomb- crowned hill, and suddenly saw 

 beneath us, close at hand, the columns of Jerash. 



The scene was very striking : before us were the remains 

 of a noble Eoman town, its ruined walls four miles in 

 circumference, not only traceable, but in places almost 

 intact ; its public buildings still so perfect that, looking 

 round, one could say, ' Here is the theatre, there the circus, 

 there the baths, there the colonnaded High Street, there 

 the later Christian cathedral ' ; for it was only after three 

 hmidred years of Christian civilisation that the Arabs 

 laid waste the city. The fertile land around is still as 

 capable as ever of cultivation; but a long period of in- 

 security to life and property has be^n the ruin of Syria, 

 and now not a single inhabitant is to be found within the 

 circuit of the ancient Gerasa. 



We rode through the walls near their south-eastern 

 angle, and, passing the massive ruin of a bath, crossed the 

 oleander-fringed brook which runs through the centre of 

 the deserted city. A very convenient site was selected for 

 our camp, in the vaulted chamber of a second bath, where 

 the tents were sheltered from the thick drizzle which had 



