as we had done during the past, on our own prudence, vigilance, and strength, for protection.

Our evening party was pretty numerous, consisting of at least thirty male Christians, no females joining them in public, so extensive has been the influence of Mohammedan manners with regard to the seclusion of women, over all classes of people subject to their rule. Among the topics of discourse was that of the miracle of feeding the multitude with five loaves and two small fishes, which gave rise to a warm dispute, as to the localities of the scene, between the Mallim Georgis and the Greek priest. The debate was in Arabic, the only tongue spoken here, in which the former appeared to me to have the best of the argument, and I was glad to see such an unusual symptom of religious freedom as this evinced, for I had hardly before believed that any person in this country would dare to dispute any thing of a religious nature with a priest of his own

sect.

It was in vain that I directed my enquiries as to any traditions respecting this celebrated city; not one among our whole party. remembered the poetic passage in Isaiah, "Who is he that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah ? this that is glorious in his apparel, travelling in the greatness of his strength?" (chap. liii. ver. 1.) Not one of them remembered any thing of even the name of Judas Maccabeus, by whom this city was taken *; nor were they at all aware that it had been a post contested by the Romans, Parthians, Saracens, or any other people, as a fortified and border possession; but imagined that it must have been originally one of the principal cities of Solomon, and from the decline of the Jewish power have passed at once into the possession of the Christian Greeks, to whom they attributed all the principal remains now seen in the city.†

* See Ancient Universal History, 8vo. edition, vol. x. book 2. chap. xi. p. 288. + The learned Dr. Vincent, in his interesting work on the Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients in the Indian Ocean, has the following passage applied to Basra or Bussorah, in the Persian Gulf, which may be appropriately introduced here:

E E

Thursday, March 15. On arising in the morning I found that I had been bitten all over, during my sleep, by an insect, whose bite seemed to combine the venom of the bug and musquito in one, and to be more painful than either. I was informed, on enquiry, that this insect was peculiar to Bosra, and failed not to select strangers for its feast in preference to those who were old residents of the place, which was the reason, probably, of so little pains being taken to use precautions against it. Our morning debate naturally turned on the subject of our future route, and as there appeared to me that nothing was likely to be gained by further delay, I was content to run the risks, which could only be avoided either by great loss of time or increase of expense, and try the road alone, or with our own party only, as we had hitherto done. I resolved, therefore, to proceed at once by a road leading through several of the Druse towns on the eastern border of the Hauran, and less liable to interruption, as I understood, than the roads on the plain to the west, from being better peopled, and the inhabitants in general being more prepared for self-defence, whether stationary or journeying from town to town. This route would also

"Basra, Bozra, and Bosara, is a name applicable to any town in the Desert: it signifies rough or stony ground: and thus we have a Bosara in Ptolemy, near Muskat; and a Bozra, familiar in Scripture, denoting an Arabian town in the neighbourhood of Judea, taken by the Maccabees. Gal. ad Alpag., p. 120.; Terra crassa et lapidosa. But see under 13. Bosrath, desertum, à Batzar clausit, quia clauduntur aquæ. Bozrah is mentioned as early as the age of Abraham; Genesis, c. xxxvi. v. 33; and in Isaiah, c. lxiii. v. 1. From hence, bazar for an emporium, and urbs munita quia circumclauditur: to which the Bursa of Ptolemy is allied."- Vol. i. p. 436.; note. 4to. 1807.

وبصر

In Richardson's Arabic Dictionary, Busret, is called —“ 1. Whitish stones; 2. A kind of gross earth, out of which they dig stones; and 3. The city of Basra or Bussorah, in the Persian Gulf, as seated on such ground." Besides this meaning of whitish stones, which is the most general, but which will not apply either to the Bozrah of the Hauran, or the Bussora of Arabia, bussr, means also "the side, the border, the margin," a sense that would apply with equal truth to the positions of both these towns, as being each on the borders of the Desert.j bazar, a market or emporium, is differently spelt, and comes from a different root; but the names of Bozrah in the Hauran, and Bussorah on the Euphrates, are each pronounced in the same manner (Bussra) by their respective inhabitants.

give me an opportunity of seeing the castle of Salghud, at a little distance east of Bosra, without more than an hour or two's deviation; and my guides being well acquainted, as they assured me, with the road from thence to Damascus, we determined on setting

out.

Before we started we were kindly detained to take a parting breakfast, at which almost every individual of our evening party was present; these including nearly all the male Christians in the town; the the present population consisting of about 100 Mohammedan families, with thirty Christians, and only a few Druses, as occasional visitors rather than permanent residents, drawn here from time to time for the purposes of trade. Besides the Christians, there were a few Mohammedans of our breakfast party, attracted chiefly, I believe, to see the strangers; their curiosity, probably, having been excited by what they might have heard on the previous evening of my peregrinations and close enquiries respecting particular objects of research in the town. Between one of these and a Christian of the party a stout debate was maintained on the subject of religious fasts; the scanty fare of our breakfast, bread, onions, and oil, having been imposed by the Greek Lent now celebrating, naturally giving rise to the subject. The Mohamme dan contrasted the long and continued privation of the Greek fast with the more agreeable intervals of the Ramazan, in which the orthodox Mussulman is enjoined to fast daily from sunrise to sunset, but is rewarded for his virtue by being permitted to feast nightly as luxuriously as he pleases, provided he eats and drinks only while the sun is below the horizon. To most persons, this would certainly be far more agreeable than living in the miserable manner of the Greeks during their rigid abstinence of forty days, in which scarcely any thing but bread, oil, vegetables, and salt are eaten; even butter, eggs, honey, and all that can be warped into the interpretation of animal food is strictly prohibited. I had a difficult task to perform when appealed to for my opinion, as it was necessary that I should conciliate the one without offend

ing the other, in which, happily, by a little management, and by the aid of plain sense and moderation, of which even the most bigotted are sometimes sensible, I succeeded, so that the harmony of our circle was preserved unbroken.

Leaving Bosra at nine o'clock, we went out by the reservoir for water near the castle, which I had an opportunity of ascertaining to be 150 horse-paces square, and the walls of which were at least ten feet thick, being an interior casing to the rocky bed out of which it had been excavated. Our course lay to the eastward, in pursuing which we passed over a stony ground, and in an hour after setting out we halted for a moment on the south bank of the Wadi Zeady to water our horses. The stream was here twenty feet wide, and ran over a bed of rock, the surface of which was naturally black wherever it could be seen fresh, as in recent fractures, but which acquired a yellow and sometimes a whitish hue by decomposition from exposure to the atmosphere. After crossing this stream we proceeded in the same direction through a more stony tract, and in another hour we arrived at the town of ElGheryeh.

This place appears to have been, in its flourishing state, quite as large as Bosra, judging from the extent of space now covered with its ruins; but it struck me as remarkable, that in all that portion of them which I could see in passing through the town, there were no columns nor other indications of Roman luxury, as in the theatre and temples of the place we had left. There were, however, many of the large massy doors of stone, which must be considered as a peculiarity of the aboriginal or earliest style of architecture known in this country, and continued down through all its successive occupiers from the same cause, namely, the entire absence of wood throughout the whole of these extensive plains: one of these stone doors was much more profusely ornamented with panels and bars sculptured in relief than any that I had yet In a mass of rock near the town I thought I could perceive the basaltic division of columns and throughout the buildings I

seen.

remarked that, wherever the stone was recently broken, the fracture showed a deep black surface, while the older stones were almost invariably coated over with a decomposed substance of a brownish yellow, resembling the rust of iron.

As the visit to Salghud, which is entirely deserted, required to be made from this place, to enable us to return here and sleep at night, the castle being about three hours' journey from hence, we halted at Gheryeh to take coffee only, and arrange for a place of shelter at our return, after effecting which, we mounted our horses, and set out on our visit at noon, accompanied by a Christian from Gheryeh, named Eesa or Jesus, a common name among the Christians of the East. Keeping on the east side of the stream of Wadi Zeady, we came in an hour to the ruined town of Diffin, in which nothing remarkable attracted my attention. In half an hour from thence we came to a very pretty and interesting spot, compared with the solitude by which it was surrounded, called Ain, being, as its name imports, according to its Arabic meaning, a spring or fountain, and the source from which issued the Zeady, the stream mentioned before. The value of this spring had been sufficiently estimated by the Romans, and probably, according to their usual custom, it had been dedicated to some nymph or river-god, as around the fountain-head of this source of the Zeady were scattered fragments of some ancient building erected over it, with Roman sculpture on many of the blocks, though not sufficient for us to trace any particular design; neither was there any inscription met with, in the cursory view we took of this place, by which we could learn any thing of its founder or the date of the work in question. From the passage of the water being obstructed in several places by the scattered fragments of the ruins near it, a small lake was formed, the banks of which were now surrounded with sedgy grass, and a flock of wild ducks were sailing on its surface, apparently unintimidated by the approach of

man.

Leaving this fountain we proceeded onward over a stony road,