Arrived at the city of Hems, on the border of the Orontes, and being
in the neighborhood of Palmyra of the desert, I resolved to visit its
celebrated ruins. After three days journeying through arid deserts,
having traversed the Valley of Caves and Sepulchres, on issuing into
the plain, I was suddenly struck with a scene of the most stupendous
ruins--a countless multitude of superb columns, stretching in avenues
beyond the reach of sight. Among them were magnificent edifices, some
entire, others in ruins; the earth every where strewed with fragments
of cornices, capitals, shafts, entablatures, pilasters, all of
white marble, and of the most exquisite workmanship. After a walk of
three-quarters of an hour along these ruins, I entered the enclosure of
a vast edifice, formerly a temple dedicated to the Sun; and accepting
the hospitality of some poor Arabian peasants, who had built their
hovels on the area of the temple, I determined to devote some days to
contemplate at leisure the beauty of these stupendous ruins.

Daily I visited the monuments which covered the plain; and one evening,
absorbed in reflection, I had advanced to the Valley of Sepulchres. I
ascended the heights which surround it from whence the eye commands the
whole group of ruins and the immensity of the desert. The sun had sunk
below the horizon: a red border of light still marked his track behind
the distant mountains of Syria; the full-orbed moon was rising in the
east, on a blue ground, over the plains of the Euphrates; the sky was
clear, the air calm and serene; the dying lamp of day still softened the
horrors of approaching darkness; the refreshing night breezes attempered
the sultry emanations from the heated earth; the herdsmen had given
their camels to repose, the eye perceived no motion on the dusky and
uniform plain; profound silence rested on the desert; the howlings only
of the jackal,* and the solemn notes of the bird of night, were heard