volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

Kasr (d-Hev. i83
but all the ruins did not seem to belong to the same
period. The decoration of some slabs at least must
date from the time when Palmyra was a flourishing
city. The remains of the town are visible for miles.
In one part of the ruin-field were the remains of a large
reservoir and an aqueduct.
We left our camping-ground a little after 5 a.m.,
November 5th, and during the first hour or two saw
many jerboas, or " jumping mice,"^ with long, thin,
tufted tails; their bodies were about 8 inches long
and their tails about i foot. They made extraordinarily
long jumps with surprising quickness and
travelled over the ground at a great pace. We also
saw several small snakes on their way to their holes.
But for our loss of time in going to 'Ain al-Wu'ul we
should have reached Palmyra in the evening of the 5th ;
as it was we decided to camp at 'Ain al-Beda, which we
reached about noon. When we left Kasr al-Her a
strong wind was blowing, and it increased in violence
every hour ; long before noon the air was full of sand
in which the sun and the range of mountains on our
right completely disappeared. Close by the well was a
rectangular building like a small khan, which the
Turkish Government had buUt as a rest-house for the
soldiers who patrolled the Damascus-Palmyra road.
The Turkish soldiers called the building " Kishla," or
" fort," but Muhammad spoke of it as " Al- Karakul, "«
at least I vmderstood him to do so. When the soldiers
in the rest-house saw us struggling to pitch the tent
and make a fire, their captain came to me and invited
us to take shelter with his men. We did so, and were
thankful for a roof, for in the course of the afternoon
the rain came down in torrents. There was a good room
on each side of the gateway, and when the captain took
me into the one which he occupied I suggested that it
^ See Bruce, Travels, Edinburgh, 1790, v., p. 121 ; Shaw, Reisen,
i, p. 264.
^ He probably meant " karaghul," J^y, i.e., captains of road-
patrols ; see Dozy, Supplement, ii, p. 321 ; Freytag, iii, p. 430a.