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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 gorgeous palaces could have made us.

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OF THE STREETS AND BUILDINGS OF ORFAH, FROM A TERRACE.

CHAPTER IV.

ENTRY OF THE CARAVAN INTO THE CITY OF

ORFAH.

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;

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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.

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