Page:The lives of celebrated travellers (Volume 2).djvu/40

 they had once occupied remained, incrustated, to borrow the doctor's expression, like the inside of a tea-kettle that has been long used, and covered with several mossy productions, whose life and verdure were preserved by the dew.

Having terminated his researches in these desert scenes, which seem to have thrown new light upon numerous points of sacred geography, our traveller returned to Cairo, descended the Nile, and proceeding by sea to Syria, arrived in that country about the commencement of December, 1721. Here he seems, for he has left no exact account of his movements, to have pursued nearly the same route with Maundrell, whose description he regarded as so accurate in general, that he merely noticed such places and things as had either been omitted or imperfectly represented by that traveller. Though it was the middle of winter when he passed through Syria and Phœnicia, the aspect of the country was verdant and cheerful, particularly the woods, which chiefly consisted of the gall-bearing oak, at the roots of which the turf was gemmed with anemones, ranunculuses, colchicums, and the dudaim or mandrakes. The air here, as in Barbary, is temperate, and the climate healthy; and, in like manner, westerly winds bring rain, while the east winds, blowing over immeasurable tracts of land, are generally dry though hazy and tempestuous.

The excursions of our traveller in this country appear to have been few and timid, and he remarks, apparently as an apology for this circumstance, that it was necessary to be upon all occasions attended by a numerous escort; for that numerous bands of Arabs, from fifty to five hundred in number, scoured the plains in every direction in search of booty. But even the presence of an escort was not always a safeguard; for the caravan with which Dr. Shaw travelled to Jerusalem, consisting of at least six thousand pilgrims, protected by three or four hun