About Two Hours To The S.E. Of Rieha Lies The Village Of Marszaf [Arabic], And S. Of The Latter About One Hour, The Ruined Town Benin.

We ascended the mountain from Rieha, turned round its eastern corner, and in one hour from Rieha, reached the village of Kefr Lata [Arabic].

We were hospitably received at the house of the Sheikh of Kefr Lata, although his women only were at home. A wondering story-teller amused us in the evening with chanting the Bedouin history of the Beni Helal. Kefr Lata belongs to Ibn Szeyaf, one of the first families of Aleppo.

February 18th.--Kefr Lata is situated upon the mountain of

KEFR LATA.

[p.126]Rieha, on the S. side of a narrow valley watered by a rivulet; it contains forty or fifty houses, all well built of square stones, which have been taken from the buildings of a town of the lower empire, which occupied the same site. The remains deserve notice, on account of the vast quantity of stone coffins and sepulchres. The mountain is a barren calcareous rock, of no great hardness. In some places are a few spots of arable ground, where the inhabitants of the village grow barley and Dhourra. On the side of the rivulet are some fruit trees. We were occupied the whole morning in visiting the neighbourhood of the village, which must have been anciently the burying place of all the great families of this district; the number of tombs being too considerable for so small a town as Kefr Lata appears to have been; no such sepulchres, or at least very few, are met with among the ruins of the large cities which we saw afterwards in the same mountain.

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