Art. 2.-A PALACE IN THE SYRIAN DESERT. HISTORY in retrospect suffers an atmospheric distortion. We look upon a past civilisation and see it, not as it was, but charged with the significance of that through which we gaze, as down the centuries shadow overlies shadow, some dim, some luminous, and some so strongly coloured that all the age behind is tinged with a borrowed hue. So it is that the great revolutions, 'predestined unto us and we predestined,' take on a double power; not only do they turn the current of human action, but to the later comer they seem to modify that which was irrevocably fixed and past. We lend to the dwellers of an earlier day something of our own knowledge; we watch them labouring towards the ineluctable hour, and credit them with a prescience of change not given to man. At no time does this sense of inevitable doom hang more darkly than over the years that preceded the rise of Islam; yet no generation had less data for prophecy than the generation of Muhammad. The Greek and the Persian disputed the possession of western Asia in profitless and exhausting warfare, both harassed from time to time by the predatory expeditions of the nomads on their frontiers, both content to enter into alliance with this tribe or with that, and to set up an Arab satrap over the desert marshes. Thus it happened that the Beni Ghassan served the emperor of the Byzantines, and the Beni Lakhmid fought in the ranks of the Sassanian armies. But neither to Justin II nor to Chosroes the Great came the news that in Mecca a child was born of the Qureish who was to found a military state as formidable as any that the world had seen, and nothing could have exceeded the fantastic improbability of such intelligence.

I had set out from England determined to journey back behind this great dividing line, to search through regions now desolate for evidences of a past that has left little historic record, calling upon the shades to take form again upon the very ground whereon, substantial, they had played their part. Not far from the western bank of the Euphrates there lies a stretch of desert through which few travellers have passed. The

track of Chesney's journey of 1837 skirts it to the west; Thielmann crossed it nearly forty years later, a little farther to the east; Huber, following the Damascus postroad, touched its northern edge. So said Kiepert; and with this meagre information as a base, I questioned the Arabs of the Euphrates concerning the north-west corner of the Sassanian empire. Many an evening by the camp fire of some sheikh of the Weldeh or the Afadleh, I tried to piece together the miscellaneous information that was offered. The sum total seemed to be that water was scarce and raids frequent, but that there were certainly castles, especially in the country of the great sheikh of the Amarat, Fahd ibn Huththāl. There lay Kheidhar, a name unknown to me or to Kiepert. One morning as we rode by the edge of the river my mare shied out of the path, and there swung up alongside of us a jovial personage mounted on a blood camel with his serving-man clinging behind him. He proved to be a brother of Fahd Bey, and with the cheerful optimism of one who will not be called upon to carry out his own advice, he bade us go forward to 'Ana, where any man would take us across the desert to Kheidhar.* So we crossed the river to 'Ana and there they assured us that at Haditha, two marches ahead, we should undoubtedly find a guide. And at Haditha, sure enough, we met an ancient corporal who expressed his willingness to take us to any point we liked to name; and for water we should have every evening a pool of winter rain.

'But this year there has been no rain,' I objected, 'and all the Arabs are coming down to the river because of the great drought. Where shall we find the waterpools?

'God knows!' said he piously, and with that I put an end to the negotiations and rode on two stages farther to Hit.

Hit lies upon a very ancient mound washed by the Euphrates. Among the palm trees on the river's edge rise columns of inky smoke from the primitive furnaces of the asphalt burners, for the place is surrounded by pitch-wells, famous since the days when Babylon was

*The proper transliteration of the consonant in the middle of the word is the dotted d, but for reasons connected with convenience in printing I have here transliterated it dh.

a great city. Heaps of waste and rubbish strew the sulphur marshes to the west of the town, and a blinding dust-storm was stirring up the whole Devil's cauldron when we arrived. We took refuge in the upper room of the khan, where I sat drinking glasses of Persian tea and revolving plans. Finally I summoned Fattuh, companion in many journeys, and presented an ultimatum. Now or never we must strike westward into the desert; under no circumstances would I take a caravan, it therefore behoved him to gather together the bare necessaries for an eight days' expedition and to find a guide.

'Upon my head,' said Fattuh blandly. wish to accompany your Excellency.'

Three guides

'Praise God!' said I. Make them enter.'

'It would be well to see each separately,' observed Fattuh, for they do not love one another.'

We interviewed them one by one, with an elaborate show of secrecy, and each in turn spent his time in warning us against the other two. Upon these negative credentials we had to come to a decision, and I made my choice, feeling that I might as logically have tossed up a piastre. It fell on a man of the Deleim, a tribe that has as evil a reputation as any in the desert, but since the country through which we proposed to pass was mainly occupied by their tents, it seemed wiser to take with us one who claimed cousinship with the sheikhs. He was to bring us to Kheidhar and find an escort of five armed men in return for a handsome reward, but we would have to engage our own baggage camels. It was a poor bargain. Fattuh shook his head over it, and we were not much disappointed when our friend came back next day and broke it. For ordinary risks the money was sufficient, he admitted, but Kheidhar lay in the land of his blood enemies, the Beni Hassan, and he would not go. Meantime we had gained a more exact knowledge of what lay before us, and we resolved to ask the Mudir of Hit for a zaptieh to take us to the oasis of Kebeisa, four hours away, and there see what chance might offer us. The Mudir was a man who combined good sense with amiability; no sooner had he read my passports and permits (of which I kept a varied store) than he declared that it was clearly his duty to do all I wished; a zaptieh should accompany me, not only to Vol. 212.-No. 423,

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