1848.]

Ancient Remains near Tortosa.

249

descending Moslem governor, Muhammed el-Beg, has told you? I do not. Alas for human greatness! This same hall has witnessed strange doings in its day. The last paragraph in its history relates to the bombardment by the English in 1840, to dislodge a company of Ibrahim Pasha's troops. Many balls struck it, and one large one lies imbedded in the wall over the west window. Several Arab huts, miserable and mean, have lately been built in the east end of it, and the spacious vaults below are used for stables.

We spent this afternoon in examining the vast quarries, five or six miles to the south of Tortosa. Their prodigious extent astonishes and perplexes the curious visitor. We rode for hours amongst them. Pococke makes rather too grand an affair of his idol temple cut out of the solid rock. It is but one of the hundred quarries to be seen hereabouts, having the sides cut down a little more regularly than the rest. The block of solid rock left in the centre, and subsequently converted into the throne of an idol, is found in many others. But the canopy placed upon this base, beneath which the god reposed, is not found elsewhere. The base of this throne is 17 feet by 16 feet 7 inches high. Above this, on the east, south and west sides, two courses of thick stone are laid, leaving the north side open. The whole is covered with one huge stone, 14 feet 4 inches by 12 feet 8 inches, and 7 feet thick, concave below, like a canopy; and under it no doubt sat the idol, facing the north. The court is about 150 feet square, and open on the north. The sepulchral monuments so well described by Maundrell, still rear their gigantic figures in this dreary desert. One is thirty-three feet high, pedestal fifteen feet square, and ten high, then a shaft or column, surmounted by a pyramid. The other is thirty feet high, the pedestal sixteen feet square, and the corners supported by four huge misshapen lions, more defaced than when Maundrell saw them. The sepulchres underneath so exactly resemble those at Lodakîa, and other places hereafter to be described, that I shall pass them without remark at present.

About a mile south of these sepulchres, is a square monument altogether unique, and well worth examination. The base is 32 feet by 31, and rises about four feet above the ground. Above the base it is 28 feet 2 inches, by 27 feet 6 inches, having two courses of stone, each stone 14 feet 9 inches long, by 8 feet 5 inches high. Over these are two other courses of smaller stones, and the whole finished by a very graceful cornice. The entire monument forms a nearly perfect cube, height, width and length equal. It is divided into two stories, and the roof and floor are composed of two great slabs of stone placed side by side. To each room there is a small window on the north side.

Standing altogether alone in this desert, amidst sand-heaps and myrtle jungle, it is a very solemn and impressive object.

After all, the quarries themselves form the greatest curiosity. What became of this prodigious amount of stone? No satisfactory answer can be gathered from the ruins of Tortosa and Ruad. Stone sufficient to build ten such cities has been quarried from this locality. As the Arvadites were great mariners, and this rock is a soft sandstone conglomerate easily wrought, and near the sea, perhaps it formed a great article of export. The fact that this kind of stone is met with in nearly all the cities along the coast, may favor such a supposition. This neighborhood is called by the Arabs Amreed or Maabed Amreet, the fane of Amreet.' This name the Greeks probably changed into Marathus, and the old vaults, foundations, sarcophagi, etc. near the 'Ain el-Hîyeh (Serpent's Fountain), may mark the precise locality of ancient Marathus. From remotest times the Arvadites must have fortified their landing and watering places on the main land; which are still at 'Ain el-Hîyeh (Amreet or Marathus), and Nahr Gumkeh at Tortosa. To this day whoever holds these places can compel the Arvadites to submit, or abandon their city for want of water; as there is no fountain on the island.

An excellent drawing of the cathedral, or great church of Tortosa, may be seen in "Fisher's Views," and it is abundantly described by many modern travellers. It is the best specimen of its kind in Syria. Very solemn in its loneliness, very filthy and very full of fleas. I copied an Arabic inscription from a stone above the pulpit, from which it appears that one Muhammed es-Sultan purified this church and made it a mosque, in the year of the Hejira 655, about 600 years ago. This must have been after the expulsion of the Crusaders, for the Moslems conquered Tortosa about the middle of the seventh century of our chronology. There was formerly another Arabic inscription legible, commemorating a second purification in the year 782 by Fuary el-Halaby. Who this Aleppo gentleman may have been, tradition says not, and this only record of his only historic act will soon crumble to dust. I suppose this superb edifice is a relict of the prosperous days of the church, under the emperors of Constantinople.

Tortosa was taken by Godfrey in 1099. It was again in the hands of the Moslems in the twelfth century, and Saladin rebuilt and fortified it. In 1367 it was sacked and burnt by the king of Cyprus, assisted by the knights of St. John, and it has had many other sacks and sieges both ancient and modern. I love to linger about its sturdy old ruins, gray with age, and rich in legendary lore. Take a speciThe governor showed me a low door beneath the centre tower

men.

1848.]

Account of Ancient Arvad.

251

of the castle, opening upon a passage, which, he said, led to a deep dungeon. In this dismal hole the crusaders confined Melek et-Dâher, bound on an iron saddle; a very uneasy seat for this king Dâher. At length one of his friends, named Shîkâ, tunneled his way beneath the tower, and up to the dungeon, and released his majesty from his uncomfortable saddle. What further exploits they did, do not illustrate this locality, and need not be told. Another door communicated with a secret passage which led up the centre of the enormous butress, to the top of the tower; and similar dark passages, without number, ran all over and under, like mole tracks in a cornfield; and divers strange adventures did happen in them. But of this enough. Here is another scene-a live one-caught in the very acting of it. This curious little city is full of cattle, I mean during the night. This morning, after the flocks and herds were driven out, an alarm ran through the town that the Ansairiyeh had made a descent from the hills and were driving off the cattle-a regular raid or foray this, of the "Border" fashion-a beetle in a bee-hive. What a buz! Away scampered some 15 horsemen, with 80 or 100 footmen of all arms at their heels, yelling and shouting like mad men. In about an hour they came back with two of the thieves, and all the cattle. I went with the crowd to the palace, to witness proceedings; and verily two more sinister looking sinners than these Ansairiyeh Borderers, I have not seen. Perhaps Scott would have discovered romance, or even poetry in them, but to my grosser vision they did look like two most shaggy, most unpoetic villains. Let them eat plenty of stick-as a bystander termed the bastinado-a very undignified, unromantic, and rather indigestible breakfast.

Ruad or Arvad.

I was rowed from Tortosa to Ruad in one hour, the distance about three miles, south-west. Most modern travellers represent this little island as covered with ruins, and nearly deserted. In reality it is covered, all except a small space on the east side, with heavy Saracenic and Turkish castles, within which resides a maritime population of about 2000 souls. The shape of this celebrated island is an irregular oval, longest from east to west, and is only 1500 paces in circuit. On the very margin of the sea there are the remains of double Phenician walls, of huge beveled stones, which remind one of the outer foundations at Baalbek. In one part this wall is still 30 or 40 feet high, and was originally 15 or 20 feet thick. This must have been a stronger place than Tyre, for its distance from the shore, and depth

of channel, rendered it impossible for even an Alexander to destroy its insular character. The harbor was on the north-east side, formed by carrying out into the sea, two walls of great stones, to move any one of which, would puzzle our best modern engineers. The space thus protected was divided into two, by a similar wall in the middle. The harbor opens towards Tortosa. The whole island is perforated to the depth of 30 feet with very ancient cisterns. There are said to be 300, and some of them are still used to collect the rain water from the houses.

Ruad, the ancient Arvad, is frequently mentioned in the Bible, and also by ancient historians, who represent it as being a very strong place. The inhabitants were celebrated navigators in those olden times. Its long story, however, of 3000 or 4000 years, is irrecoverably lost-all that is known might be written on a single page. Sic transit gloria mundi !

That there were real live Phenicians, full grown men in their day, at Arvad, these huge old walls do testify. The Greeks have left witnesses of their presence graven on columns of hard black basalta most scribbling generation.

ΕΥΝΟΙΑ ΚΑΙ ΤΙΜΗ ( ΧΑΡΙΝ.

Trap rock is not found in place on the island, and therefore these columns and blocks have been brought from the Ansairiyeh hills on the main land. With a farewell XAPIN to ΑΣΚΛΗΠΙΟΣ and ΔΗΜΟΣ, the doctor and demark of old Aradus, we row back to Tortosa.

Oct. 29th. We have spent several days about these interesting localities and now start for the great castle of Markûb. Issuing from the gate, the road lies alone the sea-shore. If I had not examined them at my leisure I would turn to the right a little, to look at some very ancient sepulchres cut in the rock above the road. The Mîneh Tortosa, or harbor of the city, is a small, shallow basin about a mile north of the gate. It is protected from the western waves by a wall carried along a natural ledge of rocks which extends about 300 feet into VOL. V. No. 18.

22