was no easy matter, as the camels had gathered in in great droves and long files, and these, added to the natural barriers of rocks and fissures, made locomotion somewhat difficult. I thought of dismounting, but my horse had long ago demonstrated that his vision was sharper, and his steps surer, than my own; so I kept a firm seat, and followed as nearly as I could the voice of Mûsa. In some eight or ten minutes I reached a spot where my horse came to a dead stand and refused to proceed. I urged and spurred him, but in vain. At last I got down to examine the nature of the barrier, and found a long line of squatting camels picketed in front. The voice of Mûsa in the mean time grew fainter until lost in the distance. It was now my time to shout Mûsa! Mûsa! And twenty others repeated the call from different places, but no Mûsa came. Aiyûb fortunately heard our calls and came up; and under his guidance we wound about until we thought we could distinguish the dark outlines of walls and buildings rising on each side. Here we dismounted and picketed our horses. Leaving our servants to look after the beds and luggage, we requested our guide to conduct us to some spot where we might get shelter from the rain. He said a house was ready for us, and he led us along over vast heaps of stones and jagged rocks till he brought us to a low doorway, through which we passed into a spacious apartment.

The house, of which we now took such unceremonious possession, seemed, internally at least, to have undergone little change from the time when its ancient master left it. The massive stone walls were unshaken; and the long slabs of black basalt that formed the ceiling lay as regularly, and fitted as closely, as when the architect had

completed his labour; and the very door hung in its place uninjured by the lapse of many centuries. This would not seem so strange in a land of peace and civilisation, where antiquities are preserved with a species of religious care, but in this country, where all is ruinous, and on the borders of the desert, where the more peaceful peasants have for long years been driven away by the wild Bedawîn, to find a house here, complete in all its parts, cannot but strike the traveller with astonishment. Its preservation is solely owing to its vast strength. It would require too much labour and toil to overthrow it, and it consequently remains perfect. The walls are upwards of four feet thick, built of large blocks of squared stones, put together without

thick, eighteen inches broad, and twelve feet long. They are carefully hewn, and closely jointed; their ends rest upon other stones which project about a foot beyond the wall, and are moulded so as to form a cornice. The door of the apartment we first entered was a slab 4 feet 6 inches high, 4 feet wide, and 8 inches thick; it opens upon pivots, being projecting parts of the stone itself,

and working in sockets in the lintel and threshold, like all the modern gates and doors in Syria. It is on this account extremely difficult to displace the door, and I have since seen hundreds of them in their places even when other parts of the building were mere masses of ruin. The first apartment we entered in this house was 20 feet long, 12 wide, by about 10 high. From it

a low door opened into another behind it of the same dimensions and character, and from this a larger door admitted to a third, to which there was a descent by a flight of stone stairs; it was a spacious hall, equal in breadth to the other two, and some 25 feet long by 20 high. A fine semicircular arch spanned it in the centre lengthwise, supporting the stone roof. The door was so large that camels could go in and out with ease.

Such is a specimen of the houses of Burâk, the name of the ruined town in which we now rested, and such, too, is a fair specimen of all the houses throughout nearly the whole of the Haurân. Many of them are still found uninjured, but very many are mere heaps of ruins. Some of them are large, with spacious courts in the interior, into which the chambers open; others again are small and

plain; but all are massive and extremely simple in their plan; thus denoting high antiquity.

Owing to the darkness of the night I was unable to ascertain, from personal observation, either the extent of this town or the general character of its buildings; but the men now sitting around us in this strange apartment were well acquainted with it, and they said that the houses were all of one kind, and that no public buildings of any extent or beauty existed. It is situated in the north-east corner of the Lejah, and is completely encompassed by broken masses of naked rock, the paths among which are tortuous and almost impracticable for horses. I inquired of Mûsa and several others about the Wady Liwa, and whether a stream now flowed through it. They all said that the wady is close to Burâk, running along the border of the rocks on the east side of it; and that no stream ever flows in it, except when the snow is melting in the mountains or heavy rain actually falling, and then it falls into the lake Hîjâneh. An intelligent Druze, whom I afterwards met in the Haurân, and who knew its whole course, confirmed this intelligence; and on examining this section of the country afterwards from the northern brow of the Jebel Haurân, with a telescope, I was able to trace the line of the wady. The distance of Burâk from the southern end of the lake Hîjâneh is about six miles, and the intervening plain is perfectly level, with a rich soil, but now wholly uncultivated.

Burckhardt visited this place in April 1812, having crossed the plain by way of Deir 'Aly and Merjâny. His account corresponds with that given above. He copied two Greek inscriptions among the ruins; they are not,

however,, of any historical importance, being simple memorials of the time at which certain men, whose names are recorded, completed monuments erected to some friend or kinsman. One of them has the following date: Erous * Περιτιου Ι. ПερITION Ï. “In the year 8, and (month) Peritius 10." If it be the era of the Seleucidae that is here used, as appears probable from the fact that the name of the month in the inscription is Macedonian, then this inscription is of great antiquity, the date corresponding to B.C. 304.2

The walls and floor of the chamber were so damp that we dreaded the effects of sleeping in it, and determined to spend the time in conversation. The loquacious Arabs crowded in upon us eager to hear some exciting tale, and each one ready to add his own story to the common stock. Mûsa was the principal speaker, and he recited some wild incidents of Arab life and warfare, the scene of which was laid in the plain we had just traversed. This spot, it seems, the great tribe of the Sab'a, with whom the people of the Haurân are constantly at war, carefully and regularly watch every autumn, when the villagers are engaged in conveying their grain to the market of Damascus, and, whenever a favourable opportunity offers, they sweep across the plain on their swift horses, plunder the stragglers, or the caravan itself, and are off to the desert again ere succour can arrive. Fierce battles sometimes take place when attacks are rashly made. One stirring incident, in which Mûsa himself bore an active part, I shall here relate, as a specimen of the tales that amused us during the early part of the night, and also as an illustration of the state of affairs on the borders of the desert.

2 Travels in Syria, p. 214.

VOL. II.

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