At The End Of Three Hours, We Arrived At El Mezareib [Arabic], El Mezareib Is The First Castle On The Hadj Road From Damascus, And Was Built By The Great Sultan Selym, Three Hundred And Eight Years Ago.

It is the usual residence of the Aga of the Haouran; but that office is now vacant, the late Aga having been deposed, and no one has yet been appointed to succeed him.

The garrison of the castle consisted of a dozen Moggrebyns, whose chief, a young black, was extremely civil to me. The castle is of a square form, each side being, as well as I can recollect, about one hundred and twenty paces in length. The entrance is through an iron gate, which is regularly shut after sunset. The interior presents nothing but an empty yard enclosed by the castle wall, within which are ranges of warehouses, where the provisions for the Hadj are deposited; their flat roofs form a platform behind the parapet of the castle wall, where sixteen or eighteen mud huts have been built on the top of the warehouses, as habitations for the peasants who cultivate the neighbouring grounds. On the east side two miserable guns are planted. Within the castle is a small mosque. There are no houses, beyond its precincts. Close by it, on the N. and E. sides, are a great number of springs, whose waters collect, at a short distance, into a large pond or lake, of nearly half an hour in circumference, in the midst of which is an island.

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