We were soon installed, and bought horses, and I began to study Arabic. The first thing Richard determined to do was to go to Tadmor. This journey was an awfully difficult thing in those days, though I am not aware whether it is now. First of all, six thousand francs used to be charged by the El Mezrab, who were the tribe who escorted for that journey. It was the tribe of Lady Ellenborough and her Bedawin husband, and she was more Bedawin than the Bedawi. There was no water, that is, only two wells the whole way, and only known to them. The difficulties and dangers were great; they travelled by night and hid by day. You may say that camels were about ten days on the road, and horses about eight days. The late Lady Ellenborough was the third of a small knot of ladies, of whom I had hoped to make the fifth—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Lady Hester Stanhope, Lady Ellenborough, and the Princesse de la Tour d'Auvergne.

I mention this, because we always talked before people without their perceiving it, and he told me in this way exactly what to say to her; but we provided ourselves with seventeen camels, laden with water, in case of accident. We had each two horses, and everything necessary for tenting out, and were armed to the teeth. We had a very picturesque breakfast, affectionate farewells—the Mushir and the whole cavalcade to see us out of the town. We cleared Damascus and its environs by a three hours' march; then Richard, according to his custom, called a halt, and we camped out and picketed, because, he said, it would be so easy to send back for anything, if aught were missing.

We eventually reached Da'as Agha, the Chief of Jerúd, who has a hundred and fifty fighting men. These little villages in the middle of a desert are sometimes very acceptable for the renewal of provisions. This Jerúd was a large one, and was surrounded with salt and gypsum. After this there was only one more village, Atneh, till the Great Karryatayn, in the heart of the desert. Here we were told of some underground curiosities, and we stopped to dig, and discovered an old catacomb. The women only wear one garment; they are covered with coins, and bits of stone made into necklaces and charms against the evil eye. After this we had a long desert ride, and were caught in a dust-storm. A dust-storm is no joke; you may lie down and perhaps make your horse lie, and cover yourself up with rugs, but if it is a bad storm, like a snowstorm, you may be buried. Richard advised our galloping through it, laying the reins on the horses' necks, and letting them go where they would, for, he said, they would know a great deal more than we should; so, covering our faces up in our kuffíyyehs—for, as far as heads and shoulders went, we dressed like natives—we gave our horses their heads, and they went at a rattling pace, and about three hours took us out of the storm. Richard and I were alone; all the rest lagged behind. When the horses once got out of the storm (they seemed to understand all about it—one was desert bred and took the lead), they relapsed into a walk till they got cool. We then went by the compass in the direction we meant to take, and were joined eventually by our followers.

We now had to sleep in our clothes, revolvers and guns at our sides, and make our men take turn to watch, in case of an attack from a ghazú, or Bedawi raid, and we took off the camels' bells. A ghazú may pass you in the night, and if you are quite silent, and a foal does not whinny, nor a dog bark, you are all right; but those are the two things you have to dread. I ought to have said that, though we accepted the escort, we were not hoodwinked. I kept taking stock of our Mezrab between Damascus and our first halt, and I thought he had an uncanny and amused look; so I rode up to Richard, and told him, in a language that was not understood, what I thought. Richard gave a grim smile, as Ouida says, "under his moustache," and said, "Yes, I have thought all that out too. Mohammed Agha, come here."

Whatever Richard told Mohammed to do, he did it thoroughly. If he wanted a culprit that had run away, he would say, "Bring me So-and-so, Mohammed." "Eywallah! ya Sidi Beg" (Yes, by Allah, my Lord Beg); and he would go off, saying, "If he were in hell I would have him out." Once he brought a man kicking and struggling under his arm, and put him down before Richard, saying, "There he is, your Excellency."

This faithful Afghan had served him in India, and he had accidentally found him in Damascus, and made him his chief kawwás. He now rode up. Richard gave him a few orders in Afghani, which no one else understood. He saluted and retired. When we got about three hours away from Damascus in the open desert, the Bedawin had his mare and his arms taken from him, and was mounted on a baggage mule. Every kindness was shown to him, and he enjoyed every comfort that we had, but two mounted guard over him day and night, and he was thus powerless. We knew quite well that the Bedawin, on his thoroughbred mare, would have curveted off in circles, pretending to look for wells, when in reality he would have fetched the tribe down upon us, and we should have been captured; orders would have been given to respect and treat us well, and then we should have to be ransomed, and this would have proved the impossibility of visiting Palmyra without a Bedawi escort at six thousand francs a head, and the Foreign Office would have smartly reproved, and perhaps recalled, their Consul for running such a risk. We stuck our Mezrab up for a show, to prove that we had a Bedawin escort, whenever Bedawi raids were near, but he was not allowed to move or to make a sign. Da'as joined us with ten of his men, and whenever there was the smallest occasion for joy or self-congratulation, they used to do a Jeríd. When I say the men are riding Jeríd, I mean that they are galloping about violently, firing from horseback at full speed, yelling, hanging over in their stirrups with their bridles in their mouth, playing with and quivering their long feathered lances in the air, throwing them and catching them again at full gallop, picking things from the ground that they have thrown there, firing pistols, throwing themselves under the horses' bellies and firing under them at full gallop, yelling and shouting their war-cry, as Buffalo Bill's cowboys do, only far more picturesque figures, with their many-coloured dresses, and better mounted on their beautiful mares. The wildness of the whole spectacle is very refreshing; but you have to be a good rider yourself, as the horses simply go wild.

On one occasion we saw a large body, apparently of mounted Bedawi. We waved and whistled our stragglers in, and drew up in line; the others did the same. We fully expected a charge. By this time I had transformed myself into a boy (Richard's son)—found it more convenient for riding long distances, and for running away. It sounds indecent, but all Arab clothes are so baggy and draping that it little matters whether you are dressed as a man or woman. So he let me ride out with two other horsemen from the ranks forward (it would have been undignified for him to do so, being in command of the party); they did the same, and this is what it proved to be—the Shaykh and his fighting men on the part of a distant village, and a priest on the part of the Archbishop of Karryatayn, with invitations. All the men embraced, my hand was kissed, and we were escorted back in great triumph, riding Jeríd as before. We rode to the village of the Shaykh, and we sent on others with our letters to Omar Beg, the Brigadier at that time commanding troops at Karryatayn, because they expected a revolt of the tribes.

We eventually arrived at Karryatayn. We were treated with great hospitality by Omar Beg, and when we left he accompanied us a little way with an immense cavalcade, which was very picturesque and pretty. We saw a mirage that day in the desert, and were very tired, and had to sleep with our arms, without undressing. We then had a somewhat dangerous defile to pass through mountains, where we found a well. I had invented a capital way of watering the beasts. Man can always draw water, but nobody thinks of the horses, and in a cup or tin pot you cannot get enough water for them. I had bags made of skins, exactly like a huge tobacco-pouch with ropes, and whenever we came to inaccessible water these were lowered until every animal had drank its fill. At each of these places, Jerúd, Atneh, and Karryatayn, several who had been longing to go to Tadmor wanted to join us, secure of protection, of food for themselves, and corn for their animals without paying a farthing for it. We increased to a hundred and sixty persons, and some had one and some two animals. I had one man with me as my own servant, a Syrian Christian, who gave us a great deal of trouble. He was very clever, and the best dancer; but the second or third day after a hard day's ride, the horses were dead beat, and instead of taking his horse and watering and feeding it, and putting it in shelter as I desired, he drew his sword and cut its throat, in hopes of being allowed to ride my second horse, so I ordered him off to the baggage in the rear. No Moslem would have done such a thing. I never liked him after. We could not turn the man out to die in the desert, but the day that we got back to Damascus, my husband sent him to prison, for that and thefts in the houses where we stayed.

We met with another ghazú before we arrived, but we imposed on them by calling a halt, planting the flag, showing our Bedawin, and ordering breakfast to be spread. We then improvised a tir by planting a lance in the sand at a good distance, with a pumpkin at the top, or an orange, and showed them how far our rifles would carry, and the ghazú being mounted on mares, not camels, we were not attacked. A few of ours curveted about, preparatory to bolting, but my husband called out to the men to form into line, and then he shouted, "The first man who leaves this line, I'll shoot him in the back as he rides away." That made them settle down.

I shall never forget the imposing sight of Tadmor. There is nothing so deceiving as distance in the desert. At sea you may calculate it, but in the desert you never can. A distant ruin stands out of the sea of sand, the atmosphere is so clear that you think you will reach it in half an hour; you ride all day and you never seem to get any nearer to it, just as if it receded in proportion as you advanced. We camped outside, close to the great colonnade. We had five tents, our free-lances ten, the rest of the party theirs, and the animals close by. There were four sulphurous streams; we kept one to drink, and one to bathe, and two for the animals. There is a height of rock on which is a castle; the mountain-top was cruised all around with an infinity of labour to form a drawbridge and moat. The ascent is exceedingly steep. On two sides is a fine range of mountains, on the other two a desert of sand, stretching far away like a yellow sea. The ruins and a small oasis caused by the foundation lie at our feet. It is possible that Tadmor once spread over all the irrigated part of the plain. A few orchards, and the splendid ruins, and a handful of wretched people have huts plastered like wasps' nests within them. The whole City must have been composed of parallel streets, and similar streets crossing them, some formed by immense columns, and stretching far over the plains, and cornered by temples and castles. The Temple of the Sun was carved from great blocks of rock from the mountains; has some fine cornices, some still perfect. In one direction there is a falling wall on the slant, as if it was arrested in falling. It has a square court of seven hundred and forty feet each side, encompassed by a wall seventy feet high. The central door is thirty-two feet high and sixteen wide. The temple still has one hundred columns standing. The few people who live there are disgusting and ophthalmic.

The tombs are a great interest—tall square towers with a handsome frontage. Inside are four stories. The ceilings are beautiful; the entrances are lined with Corinthian columns and busts. There are tiers to the very top for bodies. One contained one hundred bodies. One bore a 102 B.C. date, one Anno Domini 2—evidently a very swell family, and all speaking of sad ruined grandeur. The ruins are enormous and extensive, and simply splendid. I cannot describe the sensation of being in a great City of the Dead, and thinking over all the story of Zenobia and her capture, especially by moonlight. The simoom blew our tents nearly down part of the time. Richard discovered caves, and he spent several days excavating. We found human curios, human bones, and skulls with hair on them, which we brought home. There is a sulphurous river, bright as crystal, and tepid with the properties of Vichy. Water issues from a cavernous hole in the mountain, and streams through Palmyra. A separate spring, of the same quality, bubbles up in the sand near it. The Damascenes send for Vichy water; why don't they get it from here? We also found some Greek statues; one of Zenobia, life size. Some of our men were taken with wahteb, a disease peculiar to Syria, and hereditary—a sort of convulsions or hysteria. They generally get a firstborn to tread up and down the back, but I brought them to quicker with doses of hot brandy and water. We returned by a different route part of the way. There is a well-known river and outwork six hours' ride away from Palmyra, called Selamíyyah, and bearing east-south-east of the Mount of Hamah. Here begins a high rolling ground called El Aláh, which we come to later on. We had very bad weather, and our tents were nearly carried away at night. We had a wild-boar hunt on the way. We fell in with fifty Bedawi; they were not strong enough to attack us, but we had to stick to our baggage. Our usual day in the desert (in which we lived off and on) was as follows:—

The usual travelling day is that those who had anything to do rose two hours before starting, but those who had not got into their saddles at dawn. Being, as one may say, head sais, or groom, I saw the horses groomed, fed, watered, and saddled. Our dragomans[2] attended to striking the tents and the baggage. We started at dawn, and rode until the sun was unbearable; we then halted for one or two hours. The animals were ungirthed, fed, and watered, and we had our food and smoke, and perhaps a short sleep; after which we mounted, and rode till near sunset. We then halted for the night. The tents were pitched. If we were near an inhabited place Richard sat in state on his divan and received the Chiefs with narghíleh and sherbet; I saluted, and walked off with the horses. I had drilled my people so well that they were all drawn up in line; at one word of command, off with the bridles, and on with the head-stalls; at another word the saddles off, the perspiring backs rubbed with a handful of raki, to prevent galls, and the horse-cloths thrown on. They were then led about to cool for a quarter of an hour, then ridden down to water, if there was any, or watered out of the skins if there were not, and their nose-bags put on with tibn—straw chopped up as fine as mincemeat, the hay of this country—then picketed in a ring, heels out, heads in, hobbled fore and aft, and grooms in the middle.

I would then go back to my husband, and sit on the divan at a respectful distance and in respectful attitude, speak little, and be invited to have a sherbet or narghíleh. I then saluted, and went to see the horses groomed for the night, and get their suppers; then I returned to my husband's tent, supper and bed, and to-morrow da capo. The baggage animals, with provisions and water, are directed to a given place so many hours in advance by the compass. One man of our riding-party slings on the saddle-bags, containing something to eat and drink; another hangs a water-melon or two to his saddle, another the skins to draw water for the horses, and another or two, nose-bags with corn. We ride on till about eleven, and dismount at the most convenient place, and water as we go along, if there is any. The horses' girths are slackened, their bridles changed for halters; they drink, if possible, and their nose-bags are filled with one measure of barley. We eat, smoke, and sleep for one hour or two; we then ride on again till we reach our tents.

We are supposed to find them pitched, mattresses and blankets spread, mules and donkeys free and rolling to refresh themselves, baggage stacked, the gypsy-pot over a good fire, and perhaps a glass of lemonade or a cup of coffee ready for us. It does sometimes happen that we miss our camp, that we have the ground for bed, the saddle for pillow, and the water-melon for supper. Richard used to take all the notes, sketches, observations, and maps, and gather all the information. The sketches and maps were Charles Drake's business, when with us. I acted as secretary and aide-de-camp, and had the care of the stable and any sick or wounded men; I could also help him with the sextant, and with some of his scientific instruments.

A short day's riding would be eight hours, a very long one would be thirteen, and we generally stayed at any place of interest till it was exhausted. In this way we saw all Syria, Palestine, and the Holy Land off the beaten tracks, and through the deserts, the Haurán and wild places included. I do not like to say too much about it, because my two volumes of "Inner Life of Syria," which were published in 1875, and "Unexplored Syria," written by Richard, Charley Drake, and me (2 vols., 1872), have mostly told everything. These will be republished in the Uniform Library.

Camping out is the most charming thing in the world, and its scenes will always live in my memory. It is a very picturesque life, although hard, but one gets so used to it, as quite to dislike a house. I can never forget some of those lovely nights in the desert, as after supper we all sat round in circles; the mules, donkeys, camels, horses, and mares picketed about, screaming, kicking, and holloaing; the stacked loads, the big fires, the black tents, the Turkish soldiers, the picturesque figures in every garb, and wild and fierce-looking men in wonderful costumes lying here and there, singing and dancing barbarous dances (especially the sword-dance); or stories told, or Richard reciting the "Arabian Nights," or poor Palmer chanting Arab poetry, or Charley Drake practising magic to astonish the Mogháribehs, though neither of these two were with us then. A glorious moon lights our tripod and kettle; the jackals howl and chatter as they sniff the savoury bones, and if you can remain breathless, it is the prettiest thing to see them gambol in the moonlight, jumping over one another's backs, but if one, smelling food, runs round your tent when all are asleep, the shadow on the white canvas is so large that it frightens you. A distant pack coming along sounds like the war-cry of the Bedawi booming down upon you; their yell is unearthly as it sweeps by you, passes, and dies away in the distance. I used to love the sound, because it told me I was in camp, by far the most delightful form of existence when the weather is not too cruel.

Madame Omar Beg's two pets were a hyæna, which received me at the gate, and a lynx that lay upon the divan. The first put its fore-paws on my shoulders and smelt my cheek, and did "pouf" (like a bellows blowing in your face) to frighten me; and the other sprang at me and mewed and lashed its tail. For sheer fright I stood stock still and they did nothing to me, and amused Madame Omar immensely when she came in.

Camel-riding is very pleasant, if it is a delúl with a long trot, but a slow walk is horribly tedious, a baggage animal is bone-breaking, and a gallop would be utter annihilation. A shugduf or takhtarawán shakes you till you are sore. The nicest mount is horse or mare—mare safer; but Richard did a very wise thing—he chose rahwáns. They run an American trot, and there is no more fatigue in riding them than sitting in an armchair. You have only to sit still and let them go, and they cover enormous spaces in the day; so he used to arrive perfectly fresh when we were all tired out. I possessed a couple of stallions. I was headstrong and foolish, and I would ride them, because I hated the rahwáns' paces; so I took a great deal more out of myself than I need have done, as they generally danced for a couple of hours before they settled down to their work. However much you may love the desert and camp life, when you have had your fill of it, I cannot tell how refreshing it is to see the first belt of green, like something dark lining the horizon, and to long to reach it. When you enter by degrees under the trees, the orchards, the gardens of Damascus, you smell the water from afar, and you hear its gurgling long before you come to the rills and fountains; you scent and then see the fruit—the limes, figs, citron, water-melon; you feel a madness to jump into the water, to eat your fill of fruit, to go to sleep under the delicious shade.

Such is entering Damascus. You forget the bitter wind, the scorching sun, the blistering sand; you wonder if it is true that you are going to have a bath, to change your clothes, to sleep in a real bed, without having to watch against Bedawi, or if your brain is hurt by the sun, or if your blinded eyes are seeing a mirage. Your tired, drooping horse tells you it is true; he pricks his ears, he wants to break out into a mild trot; done up as he is, he stops to drink at every rill, and, with a low whinny of joy, gathers a mouthful of grass at every crop. You who have never travelled in the desert do not know what water means. I have seen forty Bedawi race to a hole in a rock where as much rainwater had gathered as would fill a hand-basin, fling themselves off their horses, bend and put their lips to it, and then courteously make way for each other. You will see people in the East sitting, in what would appear to you a placid idiotcy of delight, by a little trickling stream not a foot wide, with a narghíleh, and calling it kayf, which means dolce far niente, or "sweet do-nothing."

Our House.

"Though old as history itself, thou art fresh as the breath of Spring, blooming as thine own rosebud, as fragrant as thine own orange flower, O Damascus, Pearl of the East!"

Our house in Damascus overhung the road and opposite gardens, with projecting lattice windows, was bounded on the right by a Mosque, on the left by a Hammám (Turkish bath), and front and back by gardens. On the other side of the road, among the apricot orchards, I had a capital stable for twelve horses, with a good room for saises (grooms), and a small garden with the river running through it. As soon as you got out of our village there was a bit of desert sand, and a background of tall yellow-coloured mountain, called Jebel Kaysún, or the Camomile Mountain, and that was what our village smelt of. When you entered our house, you came into a square courtyard, coarsely painted in broad stripes of red, white, and blue. All around were orange, lemon, and jessamine trees, a fountain playing in the middle, opposite the liwán, a raised room with one side taken out of it, open on to the court, spread with carpets and divans, and the niches filled with plants. Here, on hot days, one receives and offers coffee, lemonade, sherbet, chibouques, narghílehs, and cigarettes. On one side is a dining-room, on the other a cool sitting-room; all the rest is for servants and offices. Upstairs, six rooms run round two sides of the courtyard; a long terrace occupies the other two sides, joining and opening into the room at either end. There is a cool house-top with plants, to spread mats and divans, to sit amongst the flowers under the trees and by the Mosque-minaret, to look either towards our mountain, or over Damascus and the gardens, and inhale the desert-air from the other side of Damascus.

We also made a beautiful arbour in the garden opposite, which contained chiefly roses and jessamine. By lifting up the overladen vines and citrons, and branches of the lemon and orange trees, and supporting them on a frame-work, so that no sun could penetrate their luxuriance; we had a divan made under them for the cool summer evenings near the rushing river, and many happy hours of kayf we passed there. The Mosque next door to us, seemed to be built round and clung to a huge vine tree, which spread up and down all over it and its terrace, and the Muezzin's Minaret and my study window were cheek by jowl. The village was charming—domes and minarets peeping out of trees, bubbling streams, the music of the water-wheel.

"The library was founded by the Ommayads. The building is situate near the stately Djami which bears their name. It has a great stone vault supported upon four columns, and ornamented with mosaics. Not so long ago it was restored with much taste under the superintendence of the Governor of Syria, Achmet Hamdi Pasha, a favourite of the Sultan Abdul Hamid. There is no proper catalogue of this library, nor is it arranged. Several of the manuscripts are moth-eaten and much injured by damp. Still there exist in it valuable papyri, as well as manuscripts on parchment and paper. Among them, according to M. Papadopulos, a conspicuous place is due to a history of Damascus in nineteen large volumes. A great deal that is new is to be found in them regarding the City and its walls, as well as about the fine arts in Damascus. This codex is a jewel of Arabic literature, and an inexhaustible source for the whole annals of the city.

"The collection of old Arabic papyri is rich. There are several that throw light on obscure periods of Arabic history and poetry, or deal with the general history of Arabs and their literature. 'Some of these papyri are as late as the fifteenth century, and may be considered,' says M. Papadopulos, 'as copies of various monuments in stone.' On papyrus rolls are to be found whole collections of poems by celebrated Arab authors, of whom Ibn Khaldoun is the most notable. Others contain decrees of the Emirs of Damascus.

"M. Papadopulos mentions also a history on parchment of the Tartars, by Abulghazi Bahadur, and a history and geography of Damascus and Palmyra, by Abulfeda. Although M. Papadopulos gives no details regarding these writings, one can identify the history of Abulghazi as that which was discovered by Swedish officers in the captivity after the battle of Pultowa, 1709, and translated into German, and subsequently (1726) into French, and published in two volumes under the title of 'Histoire Généalogique des Tatars.' Regarding the work of Abulfeda one cannot, from the brief notice that M. Papadopulos supplies, come to any certain conclusion, whether it be a portion of the 'Annales Moslemici' or an unpublished production of the celebrated Mohammedan prince and polyhistor.

"Among the other treasures of the library are a treatise of Abul-Hassan, the Arabian astronomer of the thirteenth century; a roll of Abumazar, the astronomer (circa 855), on the observatories at Bagdad and Damascus; a medical treatise of the teacher of Avicenna, Abu-Sahaal; a meteorological bulletin relating to Damascus, by Abul-Chaiz; papyrus rolls containing the Pentateuch, the Psalter, and the Gospels, in Kufic characters; papyrus rolls and others, consisting of Plato's 'Laws,' in Arabic, the 'Organon' of Aristotle, the work of Hippocrates, 'De Aëre, Aquis, et Locis,' and one containing some portions of the 'Birds' of Aristophanes (in Arabic?), and presenting variants from the received text, and the Bible, in Syriac.

"But the great prize of the library, so far as one can judge from the inadequate description given of it, is a Greek manuscript of the Old and New Testament, comprising the Epistle of Barnabas and a portion of the Shepherd of Hermas. As the discovery of it is highly interesting, I will give an exact translation of the passage referring to it.

"'One of the most important of the so-called uncial manuscripts, which contain the whole of the New Testament complete, is as follows:—

"'The manuscript is written on well-prepared parchment, and is 12½ inches wide and 13¾ inches tall. It consists of 380½ leaves, of which 200 contain the Old Testament (in the Septuagint version) incomplete; but 180 the whole of the New Testament, the Epistle of Barnabas, and a large portion of the Shepherd of Hermas. The manuscript is divided into four columns, and in each column there are fifty lines. This manuscript may be regarded as similar to the Codex Sinaiticus, and consequently is worthy of a searching inquiry and investigation. The discovery of this gem is due to us.'

"Every reader will see that it is really a gem. Not only is the mere antiquity of the manuscript a point of importance, but also the fact that it contains a portion, and a considerable portion, of the Shepherd of Hermas, which has lately been seen in a new light, thanks to the researches and criticisms of scholars like Hilgenfeld and Harnack. It is well known that Hilgenfeld maintained that he had found the Greek conclusion, still missing, of Hermas, in a London publication of the well-known forger, Constantin Simonides (Nutt, 1859). This supposed conclusion was, after the appearance, simultaneously with Professor Hilgenfeld's conjecture, of the collation of the Athos Codex by Lambros, accompanied by an introduction by Mr. Armitage Robinson, utterly rejected by Professor Harnack, and declared to be a pure forgery of Simonides—an opinion in which I concur. Now comes the ancient manuscript from Damascus as a new document. Does it contain the conclusion of the Shepherd? Unfortunately the meagre notice supplied by M. Papadopulos neither throws light on this point nor affords us sufficient information, nor does it allow us to form any certain opinion on the whole question of the importance of the Damascene Codex and its similarity to the Sinaitic, which also contains, besides the Testament, a small portion of the Shepherd. I hope, however, to be soon in a position to give further intelligence on this important discovery.

"Spyr. R. Lambros."

Environs of Damascus.

The small rides and excursions round Damascus are innumerable and beautiful; they lead through garden and orchard with bubbling water, under the shady fig and vine, pomegranate and walnut. You emerge on the soft yellow sand, and you throw off your superfluous strength, by galloping as hard as you will. There is no one to check your spirits; the breath of the desert is liberty. There is Mizzeh, a village placed exactly on the borders of the green and yellow; one side looks into trees and verdure, and the other side in the bare sand. After that, you get into the desert, and to Kataná, a village three hours away, and Hamáh. Jeramánah is a Druze village. Jobar is a Moslem village with a synagogue, dedicated to Elijah, and is a pilgrimage for Damascus Jews, and built over a cave, where they believe the prophet used to hide in time of persecution. A railed-off space showed where he anointed Hazael. When the prophet was at Horeb, "the Lord said unto him, Go, return on thy way to the wilderness of Damascus, and when thou comest, anoint Hazael to be King over Syria" (1 Kings xix. 15). Burzeh is a beautiful little village almost hidden under the mountain, nestling in verdure, and partly hidden by a cliff at the mouth of the glen. A Moslem Wely, called Makám Ibrahím (place of Abraham), assembles thousands of pilgrims on its festival day, where they practise the Da'aseh, meaning the treading—that is, the Shaykh riding over the prostrate bodies of the Faithful without hurting them—as at Cairo. Josephus, or rather Nicolaus of Damascus, says, "Abraham reigned at Damascus, being a foreigner who came with an army out of the land above Babylon, called the land of the Chaldean, but after a long time he got up and removed from that country, also with his people, and went into the land of Canaan, but now the land of Judea. Now, the name of Abraham is still famous in the country of Damascus, and there is shown a village named from him 'the habitation of Abraham,' and Burzeh is this village." It is still disputed whether Burzeh or Jobar is the true site of Hobah. These rides will take you from our mountain in a semicircle all round Damascus (at the distance of about an hour and a half from Damascus during the whole time), which is in our centre.

The longer excursions are the Convent of Saídnaya, considered by the Greeks to be Ptolemy's Danaba. There are also the Rock-tombs and temples of Menin Helbon, said to be the Chalybon of the Bible, once famed for its wine, exported to Tyre, noted by Ezekiel and Strabo, and horrible stuff it is, if it was the same as it is now. Then there is the village of Dhumayr, which contains a well-preserved temple, built in A.D. 246. This is the first day's station for the Baghdad camel-post, which Richard was responsible for. About two miles eastward of that, and at the foot of the lowest range of Anti-Lebanon, called Jebel el-Kaus, are the ruins of a little town and fort deserted for centuries. The desert of Arabia stretches right away to the east and south-east.

These are the little and middling runs. It was very pleasant for us, as we used to get acquainted with all the Shaykhs and people for two or three days' ride all round Damascus, and if we felt dull—which, by the way, we never did—we could run out and pay them a visit, such as Shaykh Sali's camp, passing El Bassúleh to Hijáneh. Lakes are marked on the maps a day's journey from Damascus. There are four lakes supposed to receive the Abana and Pharphar, but they are generally dry, the rivers evaporating or disappearing in the sand. You ride across the Ghutah plain, the Merj, and Abbs (the plains of Damascus) into the Wady el Ajam. It is also pleasant to ride down to the coast, seventy-two miles, and take a steamer going to Tyre, Sidon, and other coast places.

Richard's day, as I said, was divided into reading, writing, studying, and attending to his official work. There was one kind of duty within the town, another without the town, to scour mountain and desert, to ride hard, and to know everything that is going on in the country, and personally, not through dragomans only. His talents were particularly Eastern, and of a political and diplomatic kind; his knowledge of Eastern character was as perfect as his languages. He was as much needed out of the town as in it, and very often when they thought he was far away, he was amongst them, and they wondered how he knew things. I interested myself in all his pursuits, and I was a most fortunate woman that he allowed me to be his companion, his secretary, and his aide-de-camp. I looked after our house, servants, stables, and animals. I did a little gardening. I helped my husband, read and wrote, studied Arabic, received and returned visits, saw and learnt Damascus through, till I knew it like my own pocket, looked after the poor and sick of my village and its environs. Sometimes I galloped over the plains, and sat in the Bedawi tents, sometime went up all the mountains. Summer times I smoked narghílehs by the waterside in a neighbour's garden. Sometimes I went to pass two or three days with a harem. Our lives were wild, romantic, and solemn. After sunset the only sounds were the last call to prayer on the Minaret top, the howling of the wild dogs, the cries of the jackals in the burial-ground outside the village, the bubbling of the fountains, the hootings of the owls in the garden, the soughing of the wind through the mountain gorges, and the noise of the water-wheel in a neighbour's orchard. There was often a free fight in the road below, to steal a mare, or to kill. We have often gone down to take some poor wretch in, and bind up his sabre-cuts.

Then the supper was prepared on the roof, and there remained with us the two most interesting and remarkable characters of Damascus, the two who never knew what fear meant—the famous Abd el Kadir and Lady Ellenborough, known there as the "Hon. Jane Digby el Mezrab." Abd el Kadir was a dark, handsome, thoroughbred-looking man, with dignified bearing and cool self-possession. He dressed in snowy white, both turban and burnous. Not a single ornament except his jewelled arms, which were splendid. If you saw him on horseback you would single him out from a million; he had the seat of a gentleman and a soldier. He was every inch a Sultan. His mind was as beautiful as his face. He spoke the perfection of Arabic, he was a true Moslem, and he and Richard were both Master-Sufi. All readers will know his history. He was the fourth son of the Algerine Marabout Abd el Kadir Mahi ed Din, and was born in 1807. You all remember his hopeless struggles for the independence of Algeria, his capture, his imprisonment in France from 1847 to 1852—a treacherous act, and a tarnish to the French Government. Lord Londonderry earnestly entreated Louis Napoleon to set him free, which he did, going to the prison himself to let him out, and treating him with the greatest honour. He pensioned him and sent him to Damascus, where he was surrounded by five hundred faithful Algerines. He divided his time into prayer, study, business, and very little sleep. He loved the English, but he was loyal to Louis Napoleon. When the massacre in 1860 took place, he used to sleep at his own door, lest any poor Christian wretch should knock and petition to be saved from slaughter, and for fear his Algerines, being Moslems, should turn a deaf ear; and he saved many, sending guards down to the convents of women, and to his friends.

Our other friend was the Hon. Jane Digby, of the family of Lord Digby, married to Lord Ellenborough, and divorced. She made her home in Damascus, and eventually married a Bedawin Shaykh (Mijwal el Mezrab), the tribe of Mezrab being a branch of the great Anazeh. She was a most beautiful woman, though at the time I write she was sixty-one, tall, commanding, and queen-like. She was grande dame au bout des doigts, as much as if she had just left the salons of London and Paris, refined in manner and voice, nor did she ever utter a word you could wish unsaid. My husband said she was out and out the cleverest woman he ever met; there was nothing she could not do. She spoke nine languages perfectly, and could read and write in them. She painted, sculptured, was musical. Her letters were splendid; and if on business, there was never a word too much, nor a word too little. She had had a most romantic, adventurous life, and she was now, one might say, Lady Hester Stanhope's successor. She lived half the year in a romantic house she had built for herself in Damascus, and half her life she and her husband lived in his Bedawi tents, she like any other Bedawin woman, but honoured and respected as the queen of her tribe, wearing one blue garment, her beautiful hair in two long plaits down to the ground, milking the camels, serving her husband, preparing his food, giving him water to wash his hands and face, sitting on the floor and washing his feet, giving him his coffee, his sherbet, his narghílehs, and while he ate she stood and waited on him, and glorying in it; and when in Damascus they led semi-European lives. She looked splendid in Oriental dress, and if you saw her as a Moslem woman in the bazar you would have said she was not more than thirty-four years of age. She was my most intimate friend, and she dictated to me the whole of her biography, beginning 15th March, 1871, and ending July 7th.

After I left a report came home that she was dead. I answered some unpleasant remarks in the Press about her, throwing a halo over her memory, in which I stated that I being the possessor of the biography, no one had a right to say anything about her except myself. She reappeared again, having only been detained in the desert by the fighting of the tribes. Her relatives attacked her for having given me the biography, and she, under pressure, denied it in print through one of the missionaries, and then wrote and asked me to give it back to her; but I replied that she should have had it with the greatest pleasure, only having "given me the lie" in print, I was obliged for my own sake to keep it, and she eventually died. I have got it now, but I shall never publish it.

After this episode of my being publicly attacked about her biography, Chambers' Journal, September 9th, 1876, produced the following notice:—

A Romantic History.

"Jane Elizabeth, Lady Ellenborough, if we may trust the matter-of-fact pages of Lodge's 'Peerage,' is the only sister of the present Lord Digby, being daughter of the late Admiral Sir Henry Digby, G.C.B., great-grandson of the fifth Lord Digby; her mother was a daughter of Thomas William Coke, of Holkham, the veteran M.P. for Norfolk, and well-known agriculturist, afterwards created Earl of Leicester. She was born in April, 1807, and when little more than seventeen, was married to the late Lord Ellenborough (the Governor-General of India); but the union was dissolved by Act of Parliament in 1830.

"The rumour of her death was effectually contradicted a few months later by a letter in her own handwriting, addressed to an English lady, who was well acquainted with her in Damascus. This lady and her husband had mourned old Lady Ellenborough for two or three months as having died in the desert, and had quite given up all hope of ever seeing her again, when one day she received from her a letter stating that she was alive and in the best of health, and asking her to contradict the rumour of her decease.

'Lady Ellenborough was fortunate in the possession of at least one sincere friend, generously eager to defend her when attacked, and to make out the best case possible for her. Mrs. Isabel Burton, who had been intimately acquainted, and in the habit of daily intercourse with this extraordinary woman, during a residence of some years in Damascus, while her husband, Captain Burton, was the English Consul at that city, appears to have contracted a warm attachment for her, and speaks of her, in spite of all her faults, in terms of the highest praise. To Mrs. Burton Lady Ellenborough confided the task of writing her biography, and dictated it to her day by day until the task was accomplished. In a letter to the Pall Mall Gazette, written in March, 1873, when under the belief that Lady Ellenborough was dead, Mrs. Burton says, in allusion to this biography, 'She did not spare herself, dictating the bad with the same frankness as the good. I was pledged not to publish this until after her death and that of certain near relatives.'

"Mrs. Burton subsequently adds, 'I cannot meddle with the past without infringing on the biography confided to me; but I can say a few words concerning her life, dating from her arrival in the East, as told me by herself and by those now living there; and I can add my testimony as to what I saw, which I believe will interest every one in England, from the highest downwards, and be a gratification to those more nearly concerned. About sixteen years ago, tired of Europe, Lady Ellenborough conceived the idea of visiting the East, and of imitating Lady Hester Stanhope and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, not to mention a French lady, Mdme. de la Tour d'Auvergne, who has built herself a temple on the top of Mount Olivet, and lives there still. Lady Ellenborough arrived at Beyrout and went to Damascus, where she arranged to go to Baghdad across the Desert. A Bedouin escort for this journey was necessary; and as the Mezrab tribe occupied the ground, the duty of commanding the escort devolved upon Shaykh Mijwal, a younger brother of Shaykh Mohammed, chief of this tribe, which is a branch of the great Anezeh tribe. On the journey the young Shaykh fell in love with this beautiful woman, who possessed all the qualities that could fire the Arab imagination. Even two years ago she was more attractive than half the young girls of our time. It ended by his proposing to divorce his Moslem wives and to marry her; to pass half the year in Damascus—which to him was like what London or Paris would be to us—for her pleasure, and half in the Desert to lead his natural life. The romantic picture of becoming a Queen of the Desert and of the Bedouin tribes exactly suited her wild fancies, and was at once accepted; and she was married, in spite of all opposition made by her friends and the British Consulate. She was married according to Mohammedan law, changed her name to that of the Honourable Mrs. Digby El Mezrab, and was horrified when she found that she had lost her nationality by her marriage, and had become a Turkish subject. For fifteen years she lived as she died,[3] the faithful and affectionate wife of the Shaykh, to whom she was devotedly attached. Half the year was passed in a very pretty house, which she built at Damascus just without the gates of the City; and the other six months were passed, according to his nature, in the Desert in the Bedouin tents of the tribe.

"'In spite of this hard life, necessitated by accommodating herself to his habits—for they were never apart—she never lost anything of the English lady, nor the softness of a woman. She was always a perfect lady in sentiment, voice, manners, and speech. She never said or did anything could wish otherwise. She kept all her husband's respect, and was the Mother and the Queen of his tribe. In Damascus we were only nineteen Europeans, but we all flocked around her with affection and friendship. The natives did the same. As to strangers, she received only those who brought a letter of introduction from a friend or relative; but this did not hinder every ill-conditioned passer-by from boasting of his intimacy with the House of Mezrab, and recounting the untruths which he invented, pour se faire valoir, or to sell his book or newspaper at a better profit. She understood friendship in its best and fullest sense, and for those who enjoyed her confidence it was a treat to pass the hours with her. She spoke French, Italian, German, Slav, Spanish, Arabic, Turkish, and Greek, as she spoke her native tongue. She had all the tastes of a country life, and occupied herself alternately with painting, sculpture, music, or with her garden-flowers, or poultry, or with her thoroughbred Arab mares, or in carrying out some improvement. She was thoroughly a connoisseur in each of her amusements or occupations. To the last she was fresh and young; beautiful, brave, refined, and delicate. She hated all that was false. Her heart was noble; she was charitable to the poor. She regularly attended the Protestant church, and often twice on Sundays. She fulfilled all the duties of a good Christian lady and an Englishwoman. She is dead. All those who knew her in her latter days will weep for her. She had but one fault (and who knows if it was hers?), washed out by fifteen years of goodness and repentance. Let us hide it, and shame those who seek to drag up the adventures of her wild youth to tarnish so good a memory. Requiescat in pace.'

"But Lady Ellenborough was not dead. It will, of course, be obvious that, along with Lord Brougham, she has been privileged to read the obituary notice of her own career; and she is probably destined to see many more summers and winters in her Arab home.

"It is evident, from the tenor of the last few sentences of the foregoing letter, that the 'one fault' to which the writer alludes was the elopement of Lady Ellenborough with Prince Schwartzenberg, and that Mrs. Burton entirely disbelieves in the half-dozen or more of apocryphal husbands intervening between Lord Ellenborough and the Arab sheikh. At any rate, the eccentric lady is entitled to the benefit of the doubt; and public curiosity respecting this extraordinary woman must remain unsatisfied until the period shall arrive when her friend and confidante, Mrs. Burton, will be at liberty to publish the autobiography committed to her charge.

"It would be possible, without difficulty, to draw at once a parallel and a contrast between the eccentric Lady Ellenborough and the scarcely less eccentric niece of the younger Pitt, Lady Hester Stanhope, whom I have named above, and who, more than half a century ago, exchanged English life, habits, and sentiments, and possibly also to some extent her faith as well, for those of the wild and romantic East."

The others, besides Richard and myself, on the house roof were frequently Charles Tyrwhitt-Drake, an indefatigable worker in the Palestine Exploration; and E. H. Palmer, afterwards professor of Arabic at Cambridge, and in 1882 murdered by the Bedawi in Arabia. We were six, and I need not say how romantic those evenings were, what a halo my memory throws around them, what conversation, what real adventures, real life, real wit, real spirituality we enjoyed; and we often stayed there till the moon was on the wane. The two Englishmen were living with us, and Abd el Kadir, with an escort of his Algerines, who were picketed in our court, would see the lady home on his road to his own palace. Now I am the only survivor of those happy meetings.