volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

i86 The Well Abu'l-Fawdris.
spend their whole time in hunting gazelle; they live on
the flesh of these animals and dress in their skins. They
have no settled abode, no houses, and only a few tents
of their law and religion, if they have either, I could
learn nothing. The men we saw were of comparatively
small stature, and had black hair, narrow faces, pointed
chins, and little wicked-looking eyes ; they struck me
as mean and despicable. About ten we came to the
well of Abu'l-Fawaris, and Muhammad laid in a supply
of water for our use in Tudmur. Soon afterwards we
caught sight of Kal'at al-Ma'an, which stands on a hill
to the north of Tudmur, and of several tomb-towers.
We rode on up the Valley of the Tombs (Wadi al-Kubur),
and about noon the rise in the ground ended abruptly,
and then in a moment the whole of the ruins of Palmyra
lay on the plain under our eyes ; a truly wonderful
sight. The road down through the pass is not an easy
one even by day, and it was two o'clock before we found
our way down to the plain. The Ka'im MakSm came
to meet me and suggested that we should pitch our tent
in the open space before the Great Temple of the Sun,
and we did so. I presented my letter from the Wall
of Damascus, which he glanced at but did not trouble
to read, and he sent some of his own men to make a
fire and do anything that we wanted. After a short
rest the Ka'im Mak^m returned with two donkeys, and
we set out to look at the ruins. We went through the
large and the small temples, and looked at the gateways,
and the rows of columns, with the general appearance
of which I had long been familiar from the accurate
drawings published by Robert Wood in 1753.^ We
traced the course of the long. Straight Street which ran
for nearly a mile from south-east to north-west, and the
bases of columns and inscriptions which we saw testified
to the great' number of the statues which had ornamented
both sides of it. The remains of Justinian's
walls and conduit or aqueduct were interesting, and
when we had traced this some distance we turned back
* See his Ruins of Palmyra, otherwise Tedmor, London, 1753.