port. The captain had only an old French map "marked with crosses at
certain places, the cross meaning _porto_, as the captain explained." He
needed help, however, from his passengers to be quite sure which was
which! In this ship they lived with discomfort for a whole month. Still,
all of the friends kept well. The distance from Ladakia to Aleppo is about
120 English miles. And this journey added to discomfort, hardship, and to
hardship--lack of food for the mission party. It necessitated travelling
three miles into the hills, and when a lofty bleak plain was reached, the
muleteers made it clear that they were to spend the night there.

"We heaped our rudest boxes to make a wall, and on the lee side prepared a
sleeping-place, stretching over it some oilskins.... We had a small supply
of food in baskets.... All night the rain fell in torrents.... Our whole
floor was swamped; we had to sit on carpet bags and let them get wet.
Clothes, bedding, bags, baskets, were drenched, and we had to mount in the
morning in the midst of rain.... The roads were river-beds.... After
riding eleven hours without dismounting (the beasts never leave their
walking pace).... We had fasted the whole day, yet none of us suffered;
not even old Mrs. Cronin, for whom I greatly feared."

I should add here that Francis Newman was strongly in favour of women
riding astride instead of on the Early-Victorian side-saddle, which
necessitates a woman riding in an artificial, twisted position. Still, at
the period at which he is writing, Early-Victorian ideas about the fitness
of things were so much _de rigueur_ that Mrs. Cronin, when forced to ride
astride, was terribly disturbed.

"'Ach, Edward,' said she to her son, 'I expected they would persecute and
murdher us, but I never thought to ride across a mule!'... Three times did
her mule come down with her, poor lady, and all three in dangerous places.