The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-11-18
GREAT ANCIENT HIGHWAY
ACROSS DESERT FROM PALES
 TINE TO THE EUPHRATES.

VaIIey-Last BabyIOnian LiOn-Mar- 1
 rIage Customs Among the Desert
 Tribes.
 The number of modern Europeans or Americans who have crossed the Ara bian desert from Palestine or the Med iterranean coast to the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates hardly exceeds a score, and that score consists mostly of explorers; yet the route, from the very dawn of history until the decline of the Arabian civilization, was one of the worlds greatest highways, says Dr. Edgar J. Banks in the Sunday School Times.
 Four thousand years before our era Sargon, the old Semitic king, who but a decade ago was considered a mytho- logical character because of his great antiquity, marched his armies across the desert and launched his fleet upon the Mediterranean. The armies of Babylonia and Assyria. of the myste- rious Hittites and Egyptians, of Alex ander, of Greece. of Rome, of Persia and of the fair Zenabla, the wild i hordes of the MOngols and the Sel- jukes and the fierce Moslem troops have passed and repassed the great
 desert highway, have fought through out it's length, and there. they have
 perished from hunger and thirst.
 Probably no other highway in the
 world has witnessed so many passing
 armies, such a diversity of peoples and
 such scenes of suffering and loss of
 life, yet a picture as touching as any
 was the long line of Hebrew eXiles
 dragged into captivity, and of their de- scendants of generation later while
 wandering back to the ruins of their
 homes and temple.
 The modern traveller who would visit
 the ruins of the Babylonian cities pre-
 fers the long water route through the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf; yet there are three desert routes between Palestine and Babylonia. The short | st, tn most difficult and dangerous of the three is from Damascus directly through the heart of the desert to the town of Hit on the Euphrates, thence along the river to Feluja and a days | journey across the valley to Bagdad
 on the Tigris.
 This is the route of the modern mail l carrier, These hardy Arabs, mounted upon their fast dromedaries, set out 1 alone across the great desert For ten
 or twelve days they ride eighteen ! hours a day, halting only long enough
 to take interrupted sleep or to kinde l fire for the coffee. During the dry 1 season they are tormented with thirst and the broiling sun, in winter by the
 severe cold. Frequently one fails to
 arrive, or, belated. he comes in on foot and robbed of his mail and of his
 beast. He is forbidden to guide across
 the desert the traveller who would ven- l ture to accompany him, yet occasion ally one may provide himself with a 1 dromedary, start alone. and when at some distance from the city await the
 mail carrier, to whom he gives his an- 1 imal as bakhsheesh. Ar Englishman,
 the last to take the journey, as far as I | know, arrived at Damascus alone, afoot and naked.
 The route most frequented by the na- l tive traders leads from Alexandretta l dlpIlS d SUDu CGLIIldS5C TOdu LO lIG lIl- l teresting city of Aleppo, and down the eastern slope of the mountain to the point on the Euphrates nearest to the ] Mediterranean. Then it follows along l the river to Hit. where it joins the mail route from Damascus. The jour-
 ney by carriage or caravan, or part of the way by raft, requires from 1 twenty to twenty-five days.
 l The third route, from Damascus,
 skirting the northern edge of the des-
 ert, through Palmyra to Deir on the
 Euphrates, is the most interesting. Ahava is the modern Hit, the Is of the Greeks, an old Babylonian city which now lies buried in the mound beneath 1 the modern mud huts. Hit has al-
 ways been and s still famous for it's | hot bftumen springs. Noah's ark was smeared with pitch; from Hit there is hardly boat upon the lower Tigris and
 Euphrates in the construction of which ! the bitumen of Hit is not employed. This pure coal black substance, oozing 1 from the ground in quantities sufficient to enrich an ordinary city, is now used as a fuel in the limekilns and ship
 yards. In ancient times it served as
 mortar for laying bricks. Every Arab
 who passes Hit stops at the spring and collects enough of the black tar to pro- vide a knob at the end of a wooden | stick
 ! Even now the banks of the Euphra-
 tes river are lined with palms and rich
 gardens; in ancient times, when the
 country was in 8 good state of cultiva- tion, their route must have been l through a paradise, for even now lus-
 cious melons of various varieties, large grapes, figs, dates and oranges grow in l abundance. Along the reedy banks of the river the wild hog still lives; the jackal, the wolf and the gazelle come stealthily down from the desert to drink. When the exfIes passed, the lion, lurking in the shrubbery, was a cause for fear but a generation ago l the last lion of Babylonia was killed by l the modern Nimrod of the World-an
 Englishman.
 The journey along the river presents but few difficulties. It is the spot where the modern village of Deir now stands that the difficulties of the way
 begin to appear. Here all vegetation ceases. The soil of the desert is not