astle,
standing in a dry, treeless dell, among the hot hills. The muleteers
called it the Maiden's Palace, and said that it was built long ago by a
powerful Sultan, as a prison for his daughter. For several hours
thereafter, our road was lined with remains of buildings, apparently
dating from the time of the Greek Empire. There were tombs, temples of
massive masonry, though in a bad style of architecture, and long rows of
arched chambers, which resembled store-houses. They were all more or less
shattered by earthquakes, but in one place I noticed twenty such arches,
each of at least twenty feet span. All-the hills, on either hand, as far
as we could see, were covered with the remains of buildings. In the plain
of St. Simon, I saw two superb pillars, apparently part of a portico, or
gateway, and the village of Dana is formed almost entirely of churches and
convents, of the Lower Empire. There were but few inscriptions, and these
I could not read; but the whole of this region would, no doubt, richly
repay an antiquarian research. I am told here that the entire chain of
hills, which extends southward for more than a hundred miles, abounds with
similar remains, and that, in many places, whole cities stand almost
entire, as if recently deserted by their inhabitants.

During the afternoon, we came upon a portion of the ancient road from
Antioch to Aleppo, which is still as perfect as when first constructed. It
crossed a very stony ridge, and is much the finest specimen of road-making
I ever saw, quite putting to shame the Appian and Flaminian Ways at Rome.
It is twenty feet wide, and laid with blocks of white marble, from two to
four feet square. It was apparently raised upon a more ancient road, which
diverges here and there from the line, showing the deeply-cut traces of
the Roman chariot-wheels. In the barren depths of the mountains we found
every hour cisterns cut in the rock and filled with water left by the
winter rains. Many of them, however, are fast drying up, and a month later
this will be a desert road.

Towards night we descended from the hills upon the Plain of Keftin, which
stretches south-westward from Aleppo, till the mountain-streams which
fertilize it are dried up, when it is merged into the Syrian Desert. Its
northern edge, along which we travelled, is covered with fields of wheat,
cotton, and castor-beans. We stopped all night at a village called Taireb,
planted at the foot of a tumulus, older than traditi