the other buildings, and gave vast ideas of the greatness of the place,
leading the mind to crowd it with other edifices that should bear some
proportion to this noble monument of imperial magnificence. As suddenly as
the view of this imposing scene had been revealed, so suddenly was it
again eclipsed, by another short turn in the road, which took us once more
into the mountain valleys. But the overhanging and impenetrable foliage
of a Syrian forest, shielding me from the fierce rays of a burning sun,
soon reconciled me to my loss--more especially as I knew that in a short
time we were to enter upon the sandy desert, which stretches from the
Anti-Libanus almost to the very walls of Palmyra.

Upon this boundless desert we now soon entered. The scene which it
presented was more dismal than I can describe. A red moving sand--or hard
and baked by the heat of a sun such as Rome never knows--low gray rocks
just rising here and there above the level of the plain, with now and then
the dead and glittering trunk of a vast cedar, whose roots seemed as if
they had outlasted centuries--the bones of camels and elephants, scattered
on either hand, dazzling the sight by reason of their excessive
whiteness--at a distance occasionally an Arab of the desert, for a moment
surveying our long line, and then darting off to his fastnesses--these
were the objects which, with scarce any variation, met our eyes during the
four wearisome days that we dragged ourselves over this wild and
inhospitable region. A little after the noon of the fourth day, as we
started on our way, having refreshed ourselves and our exhausted animals
at a spring which here poured out its warm but still grateful waters to
the traveller, my ears received the agreeable news that toward the east
there could now be discerned the dark line, which indicated our approach
to the verdant tract that encompasses the great city. Our own excited
spirits were quickly imparted to our beasts, and a more rapid movement
soon revealed into distinctness the high land and waving groves of palm