The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-04-02
CURIOUS CITIES
 CUT IN ROCKS 
 Mecca-Damascus Railway to
 Make Accessible STONE-CUT VILLAGES Ruins of Petra Temple Is of Impress siye Beauty-Many Monuments of the Past Are Observable
 in the Ruins
rom the Los Angeles Times.

From the Los Angeles Times
 A recent consular report draws at tention to the renewal of work on the famous dad-Constantinople railway, which is to shorten the distance between the two cities from 55 days to five. Among other things it will do for the Orient is to make accessible the famous old rock cities of Capodocia, the queerest structures of stone in the world
 As it is now the Mecca Damascus rail way allows of getting to a station one days trip from Petra, the most famous of the cities. Round about. on the plain. rise strange cone forms of rock, the re- suit of the weathering of the soft stone and standing 200 to 300 feet high The greatest percentage of these cones were honeycombed with caves, or tombs for the dead At the front there stood house of ordinary rooms, all stone though; and behind ran the excavation in the stone. Sometimes there were arr tifcial cones erected for the purpose and they made one think of the knobs of Philippopolis.
 The plan of Petra embraced a central
 
 these rock-cut villages of Asia Minor, for their early inhabitants were cave dwellers and their ways have influenced | the architecture of later times.
 | Petra itself lies south of the Medter- | ranean on the Arabian desert Leaving l the railway one takes camp outfit, and 1 this is often sent ahead it including I train of ten horses, which is to- meet the | owners at a given rendezvous. There is an Arab guide, and, led by him. you strike across the desert due west to | where you suppose the city to lie. There. thanks to failure of the water train, | your horses may be forced to go 30 hours without a drink. You rely on finding water in the desert, but there is none | until midday. Sometimes in the dis tance, then you find the Bedouins beside some desert wells, and meet with Re- becca and her water sack, as in the time of the wanderer Jacob, who went through here
 Charcoal Forests
 Farther along come the beginnings of a great forest, the trees low and scat tered, but extending on to the Jordan where one finds the ancient woods. Much of this was ruined by the Arabs turning them into charcoal Here at one place you may count 400 cames or more, out of the mountains, loaded with charcoal You see the sun on the hills of Gilead. where the site and the ruins of the city appear over the mountains.
 Y The location is magnificent; the land I scape Is as in Greece. Creeks as you remember, followed in the wake of Alex ander here, and so perhaps, helped in taking the splendid site for a town .t gives one an idea of the grandeur ex- isting in the time of the great Roman empire. when this place was one of the large fortress cities of the rea1m. Here at hand is the group of pillars of stone of an old temple. like the grea, Temple of Zeus, at Attica, they rise. Wonder you see sections of the columns which the entire length of the city. Several of the Graeco-Roman cities of Aegean, you recall had such Those there. though, adorned the front of the Forum.
 Step on and you come to one of the two theatres-all in the rock ruins, like wise. You see the Arch of Triumph in one building. You remark how pretty the scene, looking out of the arch into the valley, the valley where Jacob wrestled in the night with the angel. Then you return to the railway. and go on into the real desert. At the end of the road, as it now stands you again take the cames The animals whine while being loaded; once the burden is actually on they come to foot and trudge on without sound.
 Your guard is vigilant and true. and he rides ahead to the top of each level to scan the country around. It is a long, long journey to the entrance of the canyon that you are to pass through to Petra. The city lies in an amphithe ater valley, and Is reached through a ravine of rocks, as in the Mammoth Cave. You note spring. which is the beginning of the creek of Edom, which gave birth to the town of Petra. Low CT in the valley appear far hills and springs; 1t was in this valley, you re- call that Moses saw an Arab village or camping place for the night And you, | too, pitch your tent here till the nor row.
 Back to the Cave Dwellers
 Round about the rock structures hold | you. Most of them, most of the archi- | lecture left here. dates from the third century before Christ to the second after. Some of the rock cuttings, | though. are of earlier times they go to the period of the exodus. or even to the |, times when men were real cave dwellers. |
 There Is splendid entrance by the canyon or cliffs, and here, too, there are rock cuttings, tombs of ornamental type. | You stand enthralled by the portal to this Appian Way Then you pass through deep, dark. narrow gorges, with the sun able to reach one side only. and on into clefts of the mountains mile in length. Walls rise 200 to 800 feet in height; the train lies 15 feet up from the canyon bottom. In almost every wall there is on old aqueduct, to take the water into the city.
 Twenty minutes or more you ride through this gloomy canyon, when sud denly glimpse ahead reveals a crack. as 1t were, in the rock. Here a richly carved facade stands out, odd as it ;s | beautiful. This, 1t seems, was the town | treasury, cut from the solid rock. The | height of the facade is 100 feet; the style | of architecture Is Greek. It goes to form | the most beautiful monument left in all Petra, one of the finest in the world.
 This temple or tomb may have been | the safety deposit of precious woods and diamonds, of myrrh and incense and the gems of the Indies, brought by the car avans of the east. It was Edom's | stronghold, and it comprised one great | chamber, surrounded by smaller ones. | all with heavy doors. The upper section | was most ornamental This place is now absolutely deserted; only three Arab |