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CHAPTER XXXV.
Boad into Aleppo—Hector, a British kavass—Individuality of Aleppo
An ancient eastern city— Its mystery—Old alleys and courts—The
Assassins—The bazaars—Old commercial khans—The wool-cleaners
—The Citadel- -Aleppo and its English intercourse— "The Most
Worshipful the British Levant Company "—Alexander Drummond
—Influence of the passes on Aleppo and Antioch—Aleppo and
future railroad construction.
From Gaferuntun Khan southward my good road
went through the same pleasant country of gentle
undulations, interminable wheat, spring flowers beside
the way, and in the west, distant ghmpses of blue
Amanus—the Mount Amanus of old geographers
topped with a wreath of snow. Villages appeared
here and there as clusters of staring white domes
half sunk in wheat—for now I had got into the land
of universal domical roofs — and beside them sometimes
showed the grey - green of olive, the tender
green of trailing willows, and the pink of almond
blossom. In this month of March I saw a green and
fruitful country with sunlight and soft air of such
happy quality and combination that no traveller
could imagine better.
At the end of its fierce summer no doubt the
country would be baked and yellow, the heat intense,
and water to seek. But its value is not to be thereby
misjudged, for by the end of May its harvests are
gathered, and the land can wait confidently for the
later rains. It snatches its annual crop with cer-