age is of the usual style, I mean to insinuate that all
Syrian villages within fifty miles of Damascus are alike--so much alike
that it would require more than human intelligence to tell wherein one
differed from another. A Syrian village is a hive of huts one story high
(the height of a man,) and as square as a dry-goods box; it is
mud-plastered all over, flat roof and all, and generally whitewashed
after a fashion. The same roof often extends over half the town,
covering many of the streets, which are generally about a yard wide.
When you ride through one of these villages at noon-day, you first meet
a melancholy dog, that looks up at you and silently begs that you won't
run over him, but he does not offer to get out of the way; next you meet
a young boy without any clothes on, and he holds out his hand and says
"Bucksheesh!" --he don't really expect a cent, but then he learned to
say that before he learned to say mother, and now he can not break
himself of it; next you meet a woman with a black veil drawn closely
over her face, and her bust exposed; finally, you come to several
sore-eyed children and children in all stages of mutilation and decay;
and sitting humbly in the dust, and all fringed with filthy rags, is a
poor devil whose arms and legs are gnarled and twisted like grape-vines.
These are all the people you are likely to see. The balance of the
population are asleep within doors, or abroad tending goats in the
plains and on the hill-sides. The village is built on some consumptive
little water-course, and about it is a little fresh-looking vegetation.
Beyond this charmed circle, for miles on every side, stretches a weary
desert of sand and gravel, which produces a gray bunchy shrub like
sage-brush. A Syrian village is the sorriest sight in the world, and
its surroundings are eminently in keeping with it.

I would not have gone into this dissertation upon Syrian villages but for
the fact that Nimrod, the Mighty Hunter of Scriptural notoriety, is
buried in Jonesborough, and I wished the public to know about how he is
located. Like Homer, he is said to be buried in many other places, but
this is the only true and genuine place his ashes inhabit.

When the original tribes were dispersed, more than four thousand years
ago, Nimrod and a large party traveled three or four hundred miles, and
settled where the great city of Babylon afterwards stood. Nimrod built
that city. He also began to build the famous To