cases to press for particular information; an Arab conductor, who proceeds with caution, surely means you well. He told me that he would leave a friend in the house of a certain Arab at Hamath[1], about half-way to Palmyra, and if in something more than a month I came there, and found that Arab, I might rely upon him without fear, and he would conduct me in safety to Palmyra.
I returned to Tripoli, and at the time appointed set out for Hamath, found my conductor, and proceeded to Hassia. Coming from Aleppo, I had not passed the lower way again by Antioch. The river which passes through the plains where they cultivate their best tobacco, is the Orontes; it was so swollen with rain, which had fallen in the mountains, that the ford was no longer visible. Stopping at two miserable huts inhabited by a base set called Turcomans, I asked the master of one of them to shew me the ford, which he very readily undertook to do, and I went, for the length of some yards, on rough, but very hard and solid ground. The current before me was, however, so violent, that I had more than once a desire to turn back, but, not suspecting any thing, I continued, when on a sudden man and horse fell out of their depth into the river.
I had a rifled gun slung across my shoulder, with a buff belt and swivel. As long as that held, it so embarrassed my hands and legs that I could not swim, and must have sunk; but luckily the swivel gave way, the gun fell to the bottom of the river, and was pickt up in dry weather by order ofthe
- ↑ The north boundary of the Holy Land.
