Page:Syria, the land of Lebanon (1914).djvu/169

THE DESERT CAPITAL of every possible opportunity to run away across the desert.

However you may go to Palmyra, it is not an easy journey. In summer the sun is fearfully hot, and in winter the wilderness wind is piercingly cold; the water along the route, while perhaps not actually unhealthful, is warm and evil-tasting and full of animal life; unless you carry your own tent you must sleep in hovels which are filthy and insect-ridden, and marauding bands of Bedouins hover about, watching for a chance to rob the luckless traveler.

Two days' journey from Damascus, near the ancient and now very squalid village of Karyatein, are a number of ruins which date from Græco-Roman times. One of these, an extensive sanitarium [sic], is known as the "Bath of Balkis"—the traditional name of the Queen of Sheba. Within the enclosure is a vaulted room with a paved floor, in the middle of which an opening some ten inches in diameter sends forth a current of moist, hot, sulphurous air. The heat of this room was so suffocating that we could endure it only for a moment; but the air is believed to be beneficial for certain diseases, and in Roman days the place was very popular as a health resort.

From Karyatein the trail strikes across a broad plain between two mountain ranges. This plain is about fifty miles, or eighteen camel-hours, long, and its springs are very few and very poor. The Syrian Desert shows no vegetation in summer except a low [ 129 ]