One tree is more than twenty-five feet in circumference; at about five feet from the ground it divides into four portions, and forms as many good-sized trunks.
For more than an hour we rested beneath these ancient monuments of the vegetable world.

The setting sun warned us to depart speedily; for our destination for the night was above three miles away, and it was not prudent to travel on these fearful paths in the darkness.
Our party here separated.

Count Zichy proceeded with his attendants to Huma, while the rest of us bent our course towards Tripoli.
After a hearty leave-taking, one company turned to the right and the other to the left.
We had hardly held on our way for half an hour, before one of the loveliest valleys I have ever beheld opened at our feet; immense and lofty walls of rock, of the most varied and fantastic shapes, surrounded this fairy vale on all sides: in the foreground rose a gigantic table-rock, on which was built a beautiful village, with a church smiling in the midst.

Suddenly the sound of chimes was borne upwards towards us on the still clear air; they were the first I had heard in Syria.

I cannot describe the feeling of delicious emotion this familiar sound caused in me.