"At Gerasa"
Chapter V. "Up Into the Mountains"
Chapter VI.
"By the Watch-Tower"
Chapter VII. "Down to the Jordan"
Chapter VIII. "At the Bridge"
"Waiting at Damascus"
CHAPTER I.
Damascus! A city that numbers the years of its existence in
millenniums; that witnessed in the dawn of history the migration
of Abraham as he went out from Ur to a land not known to him, and
to whom she gave one of the best of her sons; that sent out the
leper, Naaman, to Palestine for healing and received him back
whole; that hailed with great preparations the coming of Elisha,
who had previously blinded her army at Dothan; that welcomed Saul
of Tarsus in his blindness, restored his sight, and sent him,
transformed in his life, to transform Asia Minor and classic
Europe. Damascus! A city surviving an age-long struggle with the
encroaching desert - a struggle that must go on through ages to
come; but, as long as the Abana and Pharpar continue to flow, the
sands that would bury her forever in oblivion will be changed into
a soil of life-giving and life-sustaining fertility sufficient to
support her thousands of inhabitants. Damascus! A city of the long
ago, practically unchanged, where the Occidental may look to-day
with unfeigned interest upon architecture, costumes, and customs
similar to those that prevailed in the East while Greece and Rome
were yet young. Damascus! A city celebrated for a thousand years
for its bazaars, work-shops, and roses; a city so beautiful
thirteen hundred years ago that Mohammed, viewing it for the first
time from a distance, is said to have exclaimed:
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