road, they were grateful enough to return it, by sending out to us, from the town, a very excellent supper, composed of at least fifty dishes, besides two mules laden with ices for making iced sherbets, some white mulberries, quinces, and other fruits, forming altogether a meal and dessert for a sovereign.

We continued up late, in the enjoyment of as much festivity as our means would afford, by hearing the rude music and songs of some, and clapping our hands to the dances of others of our cameldrivers, around a blazing fire. We surrounded this circle, formed by the animals themselves, who, on being driven in from the hills where they feed, are made to kneel down, and are generally arranged in a circular form around the horses, the merchandize, and the people of the caravan, as an outer barrier for general security. Here, though our guards were set on the outposts of the camp, and we had each to relieve the watch in our turn, we sang and danced away our cares, and were as happy as the most sumptuous banquets or gor geous palaces could have made us

JUNE 4th. The effects of the preceding night's dissipation (if mirth so temperate as ours could be so named) kept us asleep until the sun rose, and it was not until a full hour afterwards that we commenced our march. The road now became more hilly and stony than before; but, in about an hour and half, on arriving at the top of one of the eminences, and winding down a ravine, we came in sight of Orfah.

As it stood on a lower hill beyond us, and presented little to the westward, except a long bare wall running nearly north and south, the view of it from hence was uninteresting. On the hill itself, from which we first saw it, I remarked a pass cut through the rock, and leaving a perpendicular wall on each side; and from

hence, all the way to the city, a distance of more than a mile, led a broad paved road, winding down the side of the hill, and still in good preservation.

In the cliffs above us, we noticed, both to the right and left, several excavations, which had all the appearance of sepulchral grottoes. Some few of these were arched at their openings, like the tombs at Seleucia, at the mouth of the Orontes; but the greater number of them had oblong square entrances, like those in the Necropolis of the Egyptian Thebes; and they were all, no doubt, works of high antiquity.

On reaching the foot of the hill, which is composed of lime-stone rock, we went for half an hour over a cultivated plain of good soil, and began to ascend a smaller rising of the land, where the approach to the town is made through an extensive modern cemetery. The tombs were all in the Turkish style, with a tall stone at each end of the grave, and that at the head ornamented with a turban, by the character of which, the sex and class of life of the deceased may be known, even by those who are not able to read the monumental inscriptions.

I thought it remarkable, however, as all the people from this place, whom we had yet seen, wore the overhanging tarboosh of Syria, with a shawl wound high on its front, that the graves here should be decorated with the Turkish kaook, or high-ribbed calpac; which is, in general, peculiar to the Osmanlies, or Turks of Constantinople and its immediate neighbourhood.

The graves were not decked with myrtle by the hands of surviving friends, as at Damascus, nor apparently attended with so much pious remembrance of their silent inmates; but they were, in general, better built, and more expensively ornamented, than the former. The body of the grave, or of the tomb above it, rose in receding stages, one within another, for three or four rows, leaving on the top a space about the length and breadth of the human form, from each end of which rose the perpendicular inscriptive stones. On the sides of these receding stages, ran around sculptured friezes,

formed, invariably, of the little arched niche, so constantly repeated in Arabic and Turkish architecture. They were here, however, in every instance, reversed, with their points downwards; but whether such a reversion of this common ornament, in being peculiarly applied to the sepulchres of the dead, had any reference to the change of state, as well as habitation, of the beings whose remains they contained, I could not learn.

Among these tombs, I saw, for the first time, military trophies depicted. The inner surfaces of the head and footstones of the graves, which fronted each other, were flat; and these were inscribed with many lines, both in Turkish and in Arabic. The letters were cut in high relief, in some gilded on a white ground, and in others painted in black on a green ground; the former, as it was explained to me, being for virgins and youths, dying in a state of innocence, and the latter peculiar to the graves of shereefs, or other persons distinguished for their piety; green being the holy colour of the Prophet. The lines were engraved obliquely, or diagonally upwards, from the right to the left, in the manner of firmans, and other state-writings; and the characters were exceedingly well executed. The outer faces of these same stones were convex; and on them were generally represented various emblems, in gaudy colours.

It was on this part, beneath the turban at the top, that I saw depicted a sword, a shield, a mace, a battle-axe, and other instruments of war, as well grouped as the Roman devices of this kind generally are. They were, however, very imperfectly executed, from their being done in painting, an art of which the Turks are scarcely yet in the infancy. The execution of the turbans was much better, as they were wrought in sculpture; and there were some variations in the fashion of them, which decided the peculiar classes of society to which the dead belonged, as certain forms are worn only by certain ranks of men.

On arriving near the gate of the city, we turned down on the left, and, crossing a small bridge over a rivulet, halted at the Khan Koolah-Oghlee. This is a large caravanserai, set apart for the use

of those who do not bring their goods into the town, but who remain there only a few days, as passengers on their journey to some other place.

Our camels were unladen at this khan; but the numerous friends of my protector, who came out to congratulate him on his return from the Hadj, or holy pilgrimage to Mecca, would not suffer us to remain here. As soon, therefore, as all was safely unladen in the great court, and the servants were distributed in the chambers above, we quitted the khan, leaving only the favourite and faithful Abyssynian slave of the Hadjee to guard his master's property.

The invitations were so many, and so pressing, that it was at first thought necessary to refuse them all, for it was impossible to prefer one to another, without giving cause of offence; so that chambers were prepared for us in a large building, called Khan-el-Goomrook, or the Custom-house Khan, where our friends were to rendezvous. Here, indeed, we were quite as well accommodated, and as much at liberty, as we could possibly have been in any private dwelling, having each of us a chamber apart, and a small one besides, in which to meet our friends, though the congratulators were so many, that it was necessary to receive them on the outside.

This khan consisted of an open court, which was, at least, a hundred feet square, and was paved throughout. On two of its sides, were doors of outlet into covered bazārs; on the third, was a range of stables and cloaca; and all around, on the ground-floor, the intervals were filled up by small rooms: up by small rooms: flights of steps there led to an upper story, in front of which were open galleries all around, and chambers, in which were carried on manufactories of cotton, as well as the process of printing them. Through the court below, ran a fine broad stream of transparent water, crossing it diagonally from corner to corner; and as it was descended to by long steps, it served for watering the horses, for the ablutions of the pious, and for the washing of the manufactures above, as they came from the workman's hands, before they were laid out on the flat terrace of the roof to bleach.