During The Whole Of My Tour, I Saw But One Or Two Arches, Whose Curve Was Lofty; The Generality Of Them, Including Those In The Public Buildings, Are Oppressively Low.

To complete the durability of these structures, most of the doors were anciently of stone, and of these many

Are still remaining; sometimes they are of one piece and sometimes they are folding doors; they turn upon hinges worked out of the stone, and are about four [p.59]inches thick, and seldom higher than about four feet, though I met with some upwards of nine feet in height.

I remained at Ezra, in the priest's house, this and the following day, occupied in examining the antiquities of the village. The most considerable ruins stand to the S.E. of the present habitations; but few of the buildings on that side have resisted the destructive hand of time. The walls, however, of most of them yet remain, and there are the remains of a range of houses which, to judge from their size and solidity, seem to have been palaces. The Ezra people have given them the appellation of Seraye Malek el Aszfar, or the Palace of the Yellow King, a term given over all Syria, as I have observed in another place, to the Emperor of Russia. The aspect of these ruins, and of the surrounding rocky country of the Ledja, is far from being pleasing: the Ledja presents a level tract covered with heaps of black stones, and small irregular shaped rocks, without a single agreeable object for the eye to repose upon.

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