In March, When I Visited The Ryhanlu, It Was Sown With Wheat, But It Produces In Another Season The Finest Cotton.

The whole plain is the property of Abbas Effendi of Aleppo, the heir of Tshelebi Effendi, who was in

His time the first grandee of Aleppo[.] Having crossed the plain of Khalaka, and the rocky calcareous hills which border it on the western side, a very tedious passage for camels, the first Turkman tents are met with at about six hours and a half or seven hours distance from Aleppo. The Turkmans, who prfer living on the hills, erect their tents on the declivities, and cultivate the valleys below them. These hills extend in a N.W. direction, above forty miles, the mountain of St. Simon [Arabic], is in the midst of them. Their average breadth, including the numerous valleys which intersect them, may be estimated at fifteen or twenty miles. They lose themselves in the plain of Antioch, which is bounded on the opposite side by the chain of high mountains, extending along the southern coast of the gulf of Scanderoun. The river Afrin [Arabic] waters this plain; its course from the neighbourhood of Killis to where it empties itself into the lake of Antioch, is fifteen or twenty hours in length. At about seven hours above the lake, this river is about the size of the Cam near Cambridge; it regularly but moderately overflows in spring-time, and is full of carps and barbles; but the Turkmans have no implements of fishing. Besides the Afrin there are numerous smaller rivers and sources, which water the valleys. One of the must considerable of these is the river of Goul, which takes its rise near a Turkman encampment [p.634] of the same name, about six hours distant from St. Simon, to the W. by N. in a small lake, about one mile and a half in circumference, and joins the waters of the Afrin, eight miles from its source. This beautiful little lake is so full of fish, that the boys of Goul kill them by throwing stones at them. The river turns several mills near Goul, and five or six more at six miles distance, at a place called Tahoun Kash, near a spot where the chieftain of the Ryhanlu, Mursal Oglu Hayder Aga, has built a house for his winter residence, and has planted a garden. On the right bank of the Afrin, about three quarters of an hour distant from it, and at three hours ride to the N.-westward of the tent of Mohammed Ali, my Turkman host, are two warm springs at half an hour's walk from each other. I only saw the southernmost, which is strongly impregnated with sulphur, and made my thermometer rise to 102°; it constantly bubbles from a bottom of coarse gravel, in the middle of the bason, which is about twenty feet in circumference, and four feet deep. The sulphureous smell begins to be sensible at a distance of twenty-five yards from it, and I was told that the northern spring was still more sulphureous.

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