July i8, 1907J 



NA TURE 



273 



his " mountain " and lords it over Moslem and 



Christian alike, despite the suzerainty of the Turk. 



Here the wild Arabs, 'Anezeh, Ghiath, and Sham- 

 mar, still live a-, tin \ did in the days of old, rearing 



their horses and 

 _. ---_., -^ camels, raiding- 



XTi; _j^^ and stealing 



those of the 

 neighbours, mur- 

 dering each 

 other, and prais- 

 ing God and his 

 prophet daily. 

 Here is the 

 desert, whether 

 stony waste or 

 bare waste of 

 volcanic d6bris 

 and lava like the 

 Safa or Harra,' 

 or steppe like 

 the Ruhbe and 

 the greater part 

 of the Hanv 

 mada, or high 

 desert. The yel- 

 1 o w Egyptian 

 desert of lime- 

 stone and sand 

 is not that of 

 Syria. Except 

 in such districts 

 as the Harra, 

 the Syrian desert 

 is not a desert 

 as the Egyptian 

 is, except for 



the fact that its inhabitants are nomads and have 



no fixed home in it. Of this steppe its inhabitants 



know everv inch; as one of Miss Bell's guides said 



to her : " By God " (Wallah), " the plain is covered 



with places wherein I rested." 



" He had struck the note," she __^_ 



goes on; "I looked out beyond him \ 



into the night and saw the desert | 



with his eyes, no longer empty but ' 



set thicker with human associations i 



than any city. Every line of it , 



took on significance, every stone 



was like the ghost of a hearth in 



which the warmth of Arab life was 



scarcely cold, though the fire might 



have been extinguished this hundred 



years. " 



Out of this waste, tenanted now 



only by the nomad and his flocks, and 



knowing now no habitation but the 



tents of goats' hair, rise the ruins 



of the great cities of the Ghassa- 



nides, like Kanawat or Bosra Eski- 



Sham, in the Hauran, wonderful 



relics of the civilisation of Syria in 



the si.xth and seventh centuries of 



our era, in which we see Roman 



forums with great pillared courts 



next door to the square towers of 



the oldest mosques of the Muslim, 



the last monuments of the " Age of 



Ignorance " and the oldest of the 



" Age of Enlightenment " side 



by side. And apart from the 



towns we see what are indeed remarkable 



monuments of Roman civilisation in the Near 



East, private houses, country-seats of the fifth and 

 sixth centuries, such as the " Sheikh's House at 

 Hayat " (illustrated on p. 103), which is still occu- 

 pied as a dwelling-house, or the stone houses at el- 

 Barah and Serjilla (pp. 245, 252), and the " Kasr el- 

 Benat " (p. 256), in northern Syria. Miss' Bell's 

 photographs of these and other remains of ancient 

 civilisation, including Kala'at el-Beida, Baalbek, 

 Ruweiha, the canopied tomb at Dana (p. 298), are all 

 very good and very interesting. 



Miss Bell's route from Jerusalem was taken by 

 way of Jericho and the Jordan ford to es-Salt, in the 

 Belka', where she deliberated as to the way of reach- 

 ing the Hauran and the Mountain of the Druz, since 

 the Turkish authorities are by no means friendly to 

 English visitors east of the Jordan, especially to those 

 who wish to visit the Jebel Dri"iz. However, by 

 avoiding the Turks at 'Amman and the neighbour- 

 hood of the railway, which was crossed north of 

 Mshitta, Miss Bell reached Salkhad in safety. Of 

 Mshitta Miss Bell gives a photograph taken " before 

 the Germans had sliced the carved fagade from that 

 wonderful building." It seems regrettable that the 

 " stone laceworlc " of Mshitta should no longer be 

 seen in its own place under the Syrian sky; now it 

 is cooped up in a dark and low corridor, where it is 

 difficult to see it, in a museum on the banks of the 

 Spree. But with the advent of the railway its re- 

 moval was perhaps advisable, in view of the possi- 

 bility of vandalism on the part of some Turkish 

 official. 



At the castle of Salkhad the traveller was received 

 with the traditional hospitality of the Drijz, and wit- 

 nessed an extraordinary scene, very well described on 

 p. 91, a sort of savage war-dance to inaugurate a 

 ghazu or raid on the Arabs of the Beni Sakhr, as 

 revenge for a previous raid by the latter. This she 

 instances as an " example of the freedom with which 

 the Druzes control their own affairs." 



North of Damascus Miss Bell again met with the 

 Druz, the members of that faith who live in the 



1 The vulcanological researctie 

 n the Harra and among the moL 



...fthelaleDr. Alpho 

 nainsofthe Leja are 



NO. 1968, VOL. 76] 



Lebanon, cheek by jowl with their old enemies 

 the Maronite Christians. And members of the- 

 mystical sects of Western Asia, who are half 

 Muslims, half pagans, such as the Nosairis, Meta- 



