THE DESOLATE C11T. 
395 
We rode on, and drawing near saw that ghostly city was 
walled around with ramparts, and masses of ruin were scat¬ 
tered round about over the plain. A few sickly weeds grew 
among the hanks of broken columns and shattered walls; 
but there was neither shrub nor leaflet nor green sod there; 
all was withered and lifeless. 
I stopped awhile to sketch the ruins, while my comrades 
passed through and went their way toward Tantura. When 
I had finished, I entered through a crumbling archway, and 
wandered about, lost in wonder at the utter desolation of the 
place. Not a living soul was there ; not a living thing that 
I could see ; not a sigh, or whisper, or sound of life came from 
out of the ruins. The silence of death was every where ; not 
even the low wail of the surf now reached me through the 
masses of shattered walls ; and I thought how terrible was 
the wrath that had thus smitten the abodes of men with 
destruction; how “ the Lord maketh the earth empty, and 
maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth 
abroad the inhabitants thereof.” 
There was nothing but ruin every where ; high walls rent 
in gaping fissures; towers shivered asunder to their bases; 
great archways cast down in rugged masses; streets choked 
and filled with shattered columns or covered over with blasted 
earth, all waste and sodless. Not a bird of good or evil omen 
sat upon the fragments; not a beast haunted the ruins; it 
was all still, all silent and without life. 
Ruined cities there are, scattered broadcast throughout this 
land of desolation ; yet all that I had seen had some remnant 
of vitality within their walls. Dark and squalid men and 
masked women haunted them ; dogs and wild beasts of prey 
and birds of evil omen fed upon the dead things that were cast 
out from the doors; but here there was nothing of the present; 
all was silent, all dead. No foul odors from dark and narrow 
streets; no bearded men with downcast faces, stalking sadly 
through the fallen city ; no dark-eyed women to steal a flashing 
look at the stranger; no human voice to utter a word of welcome, 
or say, Depart in peace; no moody follower of the Prophet to 
scowl his hatred, or stalk unheeding by ; all was of the past. 
