I.

The Eye of the East.

OUT of the South blew the halcyon day. The sky was like a precious stone. Opals and turquoises are the earth's efforts to remember that glowing sky and a day so fair.

We wound joyfully along under the snowy brow of Hermon. The path climbed northward over wide, bare hills, and the sound of running water filled the air. Presently we had crossed the summit of the ridge between the valley of the Jordan and the plain of Damascus. The streams ran no longer southward, but flowed with us. Our eyes were fixed upon the north, our hearts upon Damascus.

The summit of each hill anxiously gained, constantly disappointed us by revealing another. Conversation flagged and died away. Each rode on alone. A Turk passed by with a pompous retinue, and in the beauty of one of his train, which not even the jealous fullness of a huge black silk balloon could utterly conceal, Damascus came out to meet us, as Venice comes to you in the first gondola.

There was nothing in the broad, desolate landscape to attract the eye or engage the mind. The interest of the morning was absorbed in one desire, painful from its intensity, the desire of beholding Damascus.

The last summit was reached. A vast plain stretched northward between azure lines of mountain, and a dim band across the plains united them. It was the foliage that embowers Damascus. Little dark spots were scattered on the else treeless plain. They were groves, far beyond the city. They lay like islands in the wilderness, but like a continent of green reposed Damascus upon the waste.

As we approached, the vastness became beauty and the vagueness form. Arcadia and Boccacio's garden faded in the enchantment of that vision. Clustering minarets and spires, as of frosted flame, glittered in the morning above the ambrosial darkness of endless groves and gardens. There were no details, only the thronging richness of infinite suggestion. It was the metropolis of Romance, and the well-assured capital of oriental hope. Drawing aside distance like a veil, it challenged worship as it revealed its beauty. The glowing imagery of its description in Eastern poetry paled before the reality. I did not wonder that the Emperor Julian called it the Eye of the East, nor that the Prophet gazed long at it and with tears, murmuring that there could be but one Paradise and that his must be in heaven-then passed on as from the only Syren he feared.

A forest of sparkling minarets, and the billowy beauty of endless foliage-that was all.