sculptured in high relief, and crowned by a richly ornamental device. The mosque itself had been surrounded by a court and outer wall, which was strengthened by buttresses, and from the north-east angle of this arose a lofty minaret of a square shape, from a hundred and fifty to two hundred feet in height. It was similar in form, equal in elevation, and superior in execution, to that of the great mosque at Aleppo. Its sides were divided into storys, each of which was ornamented by sculptured arches and other devices in relief; and, in a wide band near the centre, running round the whole of the building, was an Arabic inscription of wellformed letters, in high preservation, but which I could prevail on no one to stop to read. It was, upon the whole, one of the finest fragments of Arabic architecture and sculpture that I remember any where to have seen.

Beside this ruined mosque, were the minarets of two others, little inferior in size to the first, and each also of a square form. One of these only was crowned on the top by a small cupola in the centre of the square, but this was scarcely perceptible at a short distance off.

The present town of Koach Hassar may contain about five thousand dwellings, all of a humble kind, and low and flat-roofed. The inhabitants sleep either on their terraces, or on raised benches of hardened earth before the doors, in the open air. The population is chiefly Christian, and those of the Armenian church; there being only a few Syrians, and still fewer Mohammedan residents.

At a short distance from Koach Hassar we crossed a small stream of good water, and in a little more than an hour beyond it came to the village of Soor, where our party made a halt, while the rest of the caravan pursued its way to Mardin, the ultimate place of their destination.

The ascent to that city is over so steep a hill, that goods merely passing by it on their route to other places are never carried up

there, nor is it thought that laden camels could at all ascend to it.* The merchandize of the Hadjee was therefore lodged at Soor, in the warehouse of a general receiver, who was also the officer of the government for the collection of the custom-dues on transit, amounting to two and a half per cent.

I was at first at a loss to understand why we had halted here at all, since the Hadjee had no business to transact at Mardin, and the bare act of touching there for an hour was attended by such a demand; but there were ample reasons for his so doing. The chief of these was, that the state of the roads is so uncertain on this edge of the Desert, as to make it important to obtain the most correct information respecting them, because the going by any one particular route of the many which lead from here to Mousul, or the setting out a day too early or a day too late, might be attended with the loss of all the property embarked. Another reason was, that if he omitted to halt and pay the accustomed duty of transit on this occasion, he would be sure of being burdened with some arbitrary and heavy contribution, if he should ever again pass this way during the reign of the present governor, for having, as he would say, on a former occasion, defrauded him of his acknowledged dues.

The village of Soor appears to contain about two thousand dwellings of the same kind as those at Koach Hassar, and the inhabitants here are all Christians, partly Syrian and partly Armenian, each sect having its respective church. They wear the white cloak and the dress and arms of the Koords, and though most of them speak Arabic, the Koordi, which bears no resemblance to either this or Turkish, is the language in common use among them.

* M. Rousseau says, " Il n'y a de chemins pour entrer dans Mardin, que quelques mauvais sentiers raboteux, où les chevaux le plus vigoureux ne se traine qu'avec peine."―p. 95.

JUNE 22nd. Having been entertained at Soor with an abundant meal, and passed away the oppressive heat of the day in sleep, we set out from this village on our way to Mardin, leaving all the merchandize behind us, and suffering the camels to feed and repose on the plain. We were about an hour in getting to the foot of the hill, on a course of nearly north, and found, close to its very base, a rich brown soil, laid out in corn-lands, and yielding an abundant harvest.

A great portion of the ground that we had traversed on our journey from Orfah, or, as it is called here, Rahah, to Mardin, resembled, in many of its features, the plains of the Hauran; more particularly in the general aspect of its surface, the quality of its

soil, and the nature of the rock scattered over it. As both these tracts are equally fertile, and abundantly supplied with water, they are likely to have been equally well peopled in those days of antiquity of which the Mosaic history treats; when the land of the Chaldeans and the plains of Mesopotamia were as celebrated as the land of Canaan. A neighbouring desert, such as that on the south of this, inhabited no doubt in the earliest ages by a race of needy wanderers like the Bedouins of the present day, existed also on the eastern edge of the Hauran, beyond the stony district of Lejah, and the rising land of the Druses there.

The same mode of constructing their habitations is likely to have prevailed among the occupiers of each of these tracts, and from the same cause; for in each there is scarcely a tree to be seen throughout their extent, and not sufficient brush-wood even for fuel, the dung of animals being used by the inhabitants of both for that purpose. Stone was, therefore, the only material that presented itself for the construction of such buildings as were suitable to a civilized people, or calculated for durability; and either loose earth for brick-built huts, or the hair of flocks for tents suited to wandering cultivators and shepherds, such as are used by the people of these districts at the present day.

These considerations suggested the question of "Whence is it that the Haurān is full of the ruins of stone-built dwellings, which may be assigned to a very high antiquity, while Chaldea and Mesopotamia, equally celebrated in the same remote age, and traditionally considered to be the Paradise inhabited by the first parents of mankind, shew not a vestige of such buildings, even in those parts, which, from the features of resemblance between them and the Haurān, already enumerated, were equally calculated to produce them ?"

The difficulty of answering this satisfactorily, inclined me to believe, that in both these countries, as well as in the equally ancient and woodless land of Egypt, earth dried in the sun was the only material used in the construction of private dwellings, at least,

and tents of hair or wool for the herdsmen and peasantry. This would account, in a great measure, for the existence of such unbaked brick buildings in Egypt, where all classes of its inhabitants were necessarily included in a narrow space, in consequence of the Desert hemming them in on both sides, and confining them to the banks of their river; while in the greater part of the Hauran and the open country of Mesopotamia, chiefly peopled by cultivators and shepherds, and having fewer large towns, the dwellings of the people were principally in tents, and therefore no vestige of very early buildings would be found in them.

The conclusion suggested by this is, that the numerous ruins of stone-edifices in the Hauran are all of them the remains of Roman works, and mount no higher than the age in which Syria and Palestine were colonies of that vast empire. It is true, there is a marked difference in the style of many of these edifices: some of the best, such as the temples, theatres, and castles, resembling the Roman works of the west, while the small square towers, and private dwellings, have a different description of masonry, peculiar to the Haurān itself. It may be supposed indeed, that as these towers were sepulchral, like similar ones at Palmyra, and the dwellings those of private settlers in the country, the pure Roman style might have been confined to the great national buildings; and the mixed and often capricious orders of masonry and decoration, seen in the rest, have been the work of private individuals, who followed the bent of their own fancy, when architecture began to decline, and the standard of fixed rules and just proportions to be accordingly disregarded.

The Romans, among whom architecture was pursued with a passion, rather than cultivated merely as an art calculated to increase the security and augment the comforts of man, arriving in a country, the conquered subjects of which were their slaves, and where the best materials for building presented themselves abundantly at hand, would naturally apply these resources to the indulgence of their favourite pursuit ; and hence it has happened, that in Syria

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