On the twenty-eighth day, about eleven o'clock P. M., weary from the long day journey, I dined again on tea and toast, and with my boots on dropped on my cot, just for a moment; and seemingly before the moment had passed the morning sun peeped in and awoke me from my sweet dream of home. I awoke Jona, and while the camp still slumbered we ascended a rise of ground to gaze on that silent form of grandeurs which lay before us, full twenty miles away. As far as the eye could penetrate, north and south, the Syrian highlands, long known as the haunt of the most ferocious Bedouins, loomed up, where about in the center, seemingly imbedded in the glistening cliff, lay the ruins of the once proud city of Tadmor, the queen of the desert. For, while Nineveh and Babylon at their best were old gray monks, Tadmor, in the days of David, with her stately granite columns from the Nile, coquetted with the morning sun like a maiden in her teens.

Breakfast again of tea and toast, when Jona and I, with a guard of twelve horsemen, started for a run over the hilly plain which lay between us and the ruins, leaving the wives and other luggage to come along with the caravan, which would reach Tadmor some time before next morning. Before starting I promised our escorts a piece of silver each if we should reach the ruins in an hour.

The morning was bright and the ride was inspiring, but very tame compared to the wild ride at Nazzip, for we ran steadily on over the sand-drifted desert, while the sweat on the horses' necks soon worked into a foam; and although the distance was nearer twenty-five than twenty miles, we reined up to the temple of the sun in about ninety minutes, when I gave two pieces of silver to each, for which they carried me in their arms through the ancient archway where there were once swinging gates nearly sixty feet in height, through which Solomon had many times passed. Then they lugged me to the market and coaxed me to buy them a camel bone for soup, which I did, on the promise that I was to have some of the soup, but I forgot to come around on time.

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