THE EARTHLY PARADISE
sink at last in wilderness sands, but, ere they sink, make the desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose.[1]
In the foreground of the picture, Damascus seems like an immense silver spoon laid on a piece of soft, green plush. The long, slender handle, which is made up of the modern peasant-markets, stretches away two miles southward. The nearer bowl is the site of the ancient city. Above its monotonous succession of solidly massed houses are seen high, cylindrical roofs which cover the most important bazaars; in the very center stands the famous Omayyade Mosque with its splendid dome and spacious court and three lofty towers, while a multitude of other graceful minarets—it is said that they are exactly as many as the days of the year—rise above the most mysterious and fascinating of Moslem capitals. Surely the traveler must be ignorant of history and bereft of sentiment who does not feel a deep, strange thrill as he first looks upon the great city
- ↑ It is the Abana, or Barada, which waters by far the greater portion of this fertile district. The identification of the Pharpar, which Naaman mentioned also as one of the "rivers of Damascus" (II Kings 5:12), is uncertain. It may have been one of the branches into which the Abana divides as it passes through the city. More probably, however, it was the river now known as the Awaj; for this is the only other stream in the vicinity whose size is comparable to that of the Abana and, though it flows some seven miles south of Damascus, it is used for irrigating a considerable tract of the surrounding orchard-country.
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